Gazing up at the man she loved, Margery felt such a confusing mix of emotions. She'd had a perfect view of everything and at the moment she'd seen Matthew move upon Thurold, had screamed his name, as if somehow she could have warned her stepbrother.
Matthew Hart had killed Thurold. There seemed some sort of symmetry at play—Ravenne had killed Alice, Thurold had avenged her and Matthew had avenged Ravenne. A tallying, a setting aright. But how could it be right to kill Thurold?
Matthew swiveled in his saddle to view King Richard, surrounded by rebels. He was being remiss in his duty, squandering precious moments, yet he could not leave Margery until she understood. He groped for the proper words, all the while knowing comfort was beyond his powers.
"I must return, Meg, but I will come for you. Are you and Serill at the Shop?"
Margery's only response was to shake her head. She wanted to say that she was glad that Ravenne was dead, but was she really? It all seemed so... irrelevant... so inconsequential. But not to Thurold. She prayed he'd died happy knowing he'd gained his revenge. What had he said about death? She curled her fingers in his hair, his head resting in her lap, while trying to remember. That death was a tiny thing? Hardly worth bothering about? But why couldn't it have been someone else who had killed Thurold?
"You knew Ravenne deserved to die..."
"Aye, and I curse the fates that brought us to this moment. But he was one of mine, Meg, kin as well as lord. No matter my private feelings, I had no choice."
"I know." Margery closed her eyes, fighting back a fresh wave of pain. Matthew had acted out of instinct and duty. How could that be wrong? Anything else would have been alien to his nature. He was a warrior with a warrior's thoughts and attitudes; she could not have expected him to be otherwise. Just as she could not have expected Thurold to be other than what he was. Had they four been predestined to end here, their fates forever entwined? As written in Beowulf, "Fate goes ever as fate must?"
Wat Tyler moaned again. A trio of yeomen, muttering something about "priests" and "tending wounds," lifted Tyler by his shoulders and feet and carried him carefully in the direction of St. Bartholomew's.
Matthew cocked his head, listening. From the direction of Cow Cross Street came a sound like marching feet. William Walworth and the volunteers, returning to dispatch the rebels.
Matthew again looked in the direction of His Grace, then to the men retreating with Tyler, and those who remained clustered around Margery. Their expressions carried equal measures of hostility and anxiety, and Matthew knew why.
You sense it as well, that you have lost your war, heaven help you all.
"If you will wait," Matthew said to Margery, "I'll help you carry your brother away. I will see that he has a decent burial. Until then, please, remove yourself. Do not be out here exposed." He touched spurs to his horse's flank, calling as he rode away, "Wait for me, Meg. I will return quick as I can."
Margery also heard the noise. Like hoof beats, louder with each passing moment. She must get Thurold away before the lords took their revenge, which would most likely include mutilating his body.
With Matthew's leaving, most of those around Margery began hurrying away, intent on reaching the warrens that made up so much of London in order to disappear, God willing, without harm.
"Please. Help me hide my brother," she called after them.
A bulky figure emerged from the shadows near St. Bartholomew's Hospital and hurried to her, robes flapping around his thick calves.
"Be gone from here, Dame Margery," John Ball said. "I will take Thurold and bury him in a secret place, where they'll ne'er be able to find him."
She craned her neck to gaze up at him. "What are you doing here? I thought you were long gone from London."
John Ball responded with a shrug. He had been at the beginning; he had returned to view the end. What more was there to be said?
"Thurold is my brother. I will wash his body and tend to him. I do not want him buried in some place where I'll never even know."
Bending over, he shifted Thurold away from Margery and gathered him in his arms.
Margery stood, aware of the wetness of her gown, not needing daylight to know that she was bathed in her stepbrother's blood.
They faced each other, Thurold little bigger than a boy lolling against John's massive chest.
"How could you have been so stupid as to believe you could really triumph over them?" she whispered.
"Because we are right."
As if that meant anything. John knew King Richard's promises contained no more substance than smoke in the wind. He also knew that, while he would carry his friend's body, at least, to safety, England contained no surcease for him or the rest. They would all be flushed from their hiding places and hunted down like hares. They would be torn to pieces by the hounds.
"I am speaking with ghosts who do not even know they are gone," Margery said wearily. "No one will see you or hear your pleas.'Tis past, John Ball. You are all dead men. Dead men like my brother."
* * *
Ever a man of action, William Walworth returned to the city at top speed where he sent criers to—incorrectly—inform Londoners that their king had fallen into enemy hands. Up to four thousand, weapons in hand and bearing the banners of London's wards, rushed toward Aldgate. Led by the mercenary, Robert Knolles, two bodies of citizens approached—one along Cow Cross Street, the second through St. John's Street. Almost negligently, Londoners and their leaders encircled the startled peasants like sheep in a pen.
King Richard, however, did not seek revenge. "They have not harmed me. I brought them here, and I'll not have the innocent suffer with the guilty." He ordered the rebels to disperse, but he promised he would attend to their grievances.
Understanding that their cause was lost, many rebels fell on their knees, thanking the king for his goodness and clemency. Others slunk noiselessly away, back toward their homes, hoping to avoid the vengeance they were sure was coming.
Seeing the danger for King Richard had truly passed, Matthew Hart raced back to Smithfield, hoping to find Margery. Upon approaching St. Bartholomew's, he saw William Walworth, who had dragged Wat Tyler from the chamber of the Master of St. Bartholomew's where his wounds were being tended, out into the square. As Matthew passed, Walworth signaled for his man to behead Tyler.
Matthew guided his horse away from that macabre tableau, toward Smithfield Hospital. It was dark and he was so tired, but he questioned everyone he met about Margery's whereabouts.
"She and another carried someone off. I canna say where," a man dressed as a merchant answered in response to his question.
But no one else could offer any clues. He would seek her out tomorrow. He did not yet dare ride through London's streets alone, but tomorrow... somehow he would set things right.
* * *
William Walworth presented a grisly souvenir to King Richard—Wat Tyler's severed head on a pike.
"Take it to London Bridge," His Grace ordered, as calmly as when he'd addressed the rebels. "Put it up in place of Archbishop Sudbury's."
Richard knighted William Walworth and the squire who had run through Wat Tyler. Then, leading his triumphant knights, His Grace returned to London and his mother, who had remained at the Wardrobe, frantically awaiting word.
"Rejoice and praise God," King Richard said, as the Queen Mother embraced him. "For today I have recovered my heritage that was lost, and the realm of England."
Chapter 24
The Kingdom
Summer, 1381
Man beware and be no fool:
Think upon the axe and of the tool!
The stool was hard, the axe was sharp,
In the fourth year of King Richard.
Retribution was swift and relentless. How could this be when His Grace had seemed so magnanimous, so understanding throughout the revolt? Any rebels caught were executed. Many were beheaded by the widows of the merchants they had killed. Hundreds were held without bail in overflowing jails and dunge
ons. Legal niceties such as due process or trials were ignored. Gibbets glutted England's highways and byways and hanged men glutted the gibbets—seven thousand by the end of the bloodletting. Armored knights crowded the roads, on their way to smash pockets of resistance or to administer their own brand of military justice. As the troops thundered past, common folk trembled in their fields or hid in their cottages or fled deeper into the forests after the example of that legendary outlaw, Robin Hood.
On June 22, a corrupt lawyer from Cornwall, Sir Robert Tresilian, replaced Bury St. Edmund's murdered Chief Justice John Cavendish in that part of East Anglia. Tresilian led what was described as a "bloody assize" against the rebels, torturing them into giving up names of suspects and then contriving to have the resultant charges presented as felonies rather than the less serious trespasses. Tresilian's favorite punishment was hanging; his second, hanging, drawing, and quartering. When a first jury refused to find against the peasant leaders who'd laid waste to Bury St. Edmunds Abbey, Tresilian selected a second and then a third, warning this last batch of jurors that if they failed to abide by his will—meaning blanket executions—they themselves would be put to death.
It was here in East Anglia that the closest thing to an actual battle took place between the Great Rising rebels and King Richard's men.
Henry Despenser, Bishop of Norwich, had been nicknamed the Fighting Bishop because of his participation in the French wars. Henry Despenser's ancestry—as was typical among the tangled skein of nobility, marriages and alliances—could be traced back to his great-grandfather, Hugh Despenser, who had been one of Edward II's favorites, and who had been hanged, drawn and quartered after King Edward's queen had knocked her feckless husband from England's throne.
The Fighting Bishop was incensed by Gerald Listler, a moderately wealthy dyer who some had taken to calling "King of the Commons." Listler and his band of followers had ravaged Norwich, which was not only one of England's largest and most important cities, but part of Henry Despenser's bishopric. In addition to murdering several prominent citizens, Listler's rebels had destroyed the property and possessions of poll tax collectors and other city officials, including legal records, court rolls and taxation documents.
With John Ball the only other rebel leader remaining free, Bishop Despenser was determined to make an example out of the King of the Commons, who was holed up in the North Walsham area, a half-day's ride away. In turn, Geoffrey Listler, seeking recruits in order to face a much better armed foe, had sent riders through nearby villages. Enough men responded to technically be called an "army," though few had any fighting or tactical experience. The men did their best to prepare by digging a military ditch around their camp. They then reinforced the ditch with tables, shutters and gates, all held together with wooden stakes, and barricaded the rear with carts and carriages.
One did not need the skills of a diviner to foretell the outcome.
The chronicler, Thomas Walsingham, described Henry Despenser as a "wild boar gnashing its teeth." And that he was. After calling his trumpeters and buglers to sound, the Fighting Bishop seized a lance and led his knights in a charge which soon had the rebels fleeing in the carts that had been placed to the rear of their camp, or on foot or horseback across East Anglia's streams and rivers and fens.
The King of the Commons was easily captured. Forgoing a trial, Bishop Despenser sentenced Geoffrey Listler to a traitor's death. Since Henry Despenser was still a member of the clergy, he did hear the unfortunate dyer's confession before beheading him. Then Listler's body was cut into four pieces with the last quarter nailed up outside his cottage in the picturesque market town of Framlingham.
"As a reminder to all who pass," growled the Fighting Bishop. "This is what happens to false kings."
Those rebels who weren't killed or captured hid until the bishop and his men retreated to Norwich.
Including a black-haired, black-eyed blacksmith who tied his long mane behind his neck with a leather thong.
* * *
"The populace shuddered at the spectacle of so many gibbeted bodies exposed to the light of day... Despite all the retribution thus visited on the guilty the severity of the royal displeasure seemed to be no way mitigated but rather to be directed with increased harshness towards the punishment of offenders... it was widely thought that in the circumstances the king's generous nature ought to exercise leniency rather than vindictiveness..." ~Westminster Chronicles
In July, 1381, King Richard, allowing himself to be persuaded by his royal uncles and England's great landowners, annulled the charters he had issued at Miles End. Richard claimed the privileges had been made under duress and therefore counted for nothing.
In mid-July, John Ball, who had fled into the Midlands, was captured at Coventry where he'd been hiding in a ruin. Ball was brought in chains to St. Albans, thirty miles north of London, where he awaited King Richard's version of justice.
During that time, Matthew Hart had surrounded his son with some of his most battle seasoned retainers and had Serill safely removed to Cumbria. Margery had agreed with Matthew's decision, though she had declined his imprecations for her to ride with Serill. John Ball, who had rescued her from Ravennesfield, who had taught her to read and write, who had buried her stepbrother for her, merited the presence of at least one friend at his execution.
Margery remembered when her time had been due with Serill, before her labor pains had become too great and John Ball had been shooed from her lying-in chamber, when he'd sat beside her, reading aloud from that book by Roger Bacon, that Franciscan Friar who predicted such future wonders. A world that seemed enchanted, and so very different from the horror of present-day England.
Was the rebellion's outcome preordained? Since God had created all the vices and virtues, had He then shaped man's nature to strive for dominance, to keep one above the other? Had God, who had appointed kings to rule, also decreed that the few must always rule over the many? It seemed so. Otherwise, it would not be so.
But just as God had created the ruler and the ruled, He also must have planted the yearning for equality in men like Thurold and John Ball. Otherwise, that would not be so. Or mayhap that longing wasn't from God, but simply another symptom of man's sinful nature, or the whisperings and proddings of Satan, stirring up man's anger and discontent at their station in life.
But Jesus had spoken lovingly of the poor. In the Beatitudes He'd preached:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven...
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted... Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied...
Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven..."
John Ball and Thurold had certainly been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, when all they'd sought was a life with enough, not too much, in which they had the right to say, "Yea" and "Nay" and enjoy the same liberty as their lords. Surely their desire did not contradict Christ's words. If it did, then their lives and the lives of all those who came before and after, all those who expressed the belief that "we are all one and the same," "that everything shall be in common," who fought so valiantly to bring such ideals into being would have been for naught.
And that Margery would not accept.
* * *
Margery sat near the back of the chamber. Hundreds of former rebels had already disavowed any sympathy or even knowledge of their erstwhile leader, and the few here today hoped their presence would be public proof of their allegiance, not to John Ball, but to King Richard.
Matthew Hart, along with some of England's greatest magnates who had traveled to St. Albans exclusively to view the hedge-priest's extermination, arrayed himself close to the front. Since that day in Smithfield, Margery and her lover had rarely seen each other, at least to converse. He had his duties, of course—always duty—though she did not begrudge him that. Margery's ability to judge him over Thurold or
related events seemed to have been suspended. Perhaps she was simply numb.
She still had no idea what she would do after John Ball's execution. Follow Matthew to Cumbria, as if nothing had occurred? Return to London? What? The entire world was upended, as it had been during the Death, but she had not really pondered the possibilities beyond the fact that 'twas her duty to say good-bye to her friend.
During the proceedings, the corrupt Judge Tresilian lingered over each of John Ball's charges. King Richard sat beside the judge, alert and seemingly engaged, as if the outcome had not already been predetermined. Margery studied England's sovereign.
You look so beautiful, so pure and innocent. Such perfectly formed lips, still as plump and red as a child's. And such clear eyes. Ah, but your heart, 'tis as treacherous as a viper's, she thought, though without acrimony. You lied so prettily to the commons, and now you will gain revenge on a good man. She knew with blinding certainty that Englishmen and women would rue the day when Richard II had been crowned king.
After a vitriolic summation, Judge Tresilian—who in less than a decade's time would be begging the man beside him to spare his own neck—handed down John Ball's sentence in his gratingly high-pitched voice. "As a traitor of the realm, you will be taken out on the morrow, and you shall be hanged, drawn, and quartered. May God have mercy on your soul."
"Oh, my friend," Margery whispered.
She was in a position to see little more than John Ball's profile and his back. The hedge-priest's posture did not change; he remained standing tall and straight. Tears stung Margery's eyes. How can I ever witness what they are going to do to you? As John was being led from the chamber, he glanced at her in passing. A slight smile touched his lips, as if he were telling her that he was well.
The lords left their benches for the exit. When Matthew approached he hesitated before walking over to Margery. He appeared so very weary, the lines alongside his mouth and eyes unusually prominent.
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