"Ah, Meg." He looked as if he would embrace her, but then held back."'Tis dangerous for you to be here, to call attention to yourself. Will you not stay at the inn until this is over and then we will be able to... at least decide..." He stumbled to a finish. "About... plans."
At Matthew's request, Margery was staying at an inn outside St. Albans guarded by a pair of Hart retainers. No personal servants, however, for all had known John Ball and, though it made no logical sense, Margery felt as if keeping even a few away might give her friend a measure of dignity and respect that he would otherwise be denied.
"I will leave after my friend is dead," she said. "Not before. He deserves that much."
Matthew nodded, and after one last searching look into her eyes, followed the others.
On the following day, July 15, Judge Tresilian allowed John Ball to speak.
John calmly addressed his accusers. "I am guilty of all your charges. I did lead the rebellion. I did send seditious letters around the countryside, calling my flock to unite. I do not apologize for my acts, or seek pardon from anyone. I have naught to ask forgiveness for."
As John finished his simple statement, Margery noticed the admiration on the faces of several lords. Without sword or armor to protect him, John Ball would go to his death as bravely as any of them. No matter how foreign his beliefs, the barons were impressed by such courage. Margery's gaze swung to her lover, trying to decipher his reaction.
But Matthew Hart merely looked sad.
* * *
John Ball's demise was as savage as Margery had feared, but still she kept her word. As was customary, the executioner had hanged John, only to cut him down before he'd expired so he would still feel the executioner's blade as his stomach was slit open and his entrails drawn forth. Throughout, John had made very little noise, or so it seemed, for sometimes it was hard to hear. While the crowd was small it was raucous, as if jeers and cheers might hide the now dangerous reality that many of them had also committed treason. But beyond those few, the usual holiday atmosphere was missing. Some, like Margery, could not hide their disgust or horror, and returned to their homes with heads down and shoulders slumped.
I am glad Thurold did not live long enough to view the end of his hero, or the hopes and dreams of the commons. I am glad he died still believing, at least a bit, in King Richard.
After John Ball was declared dead, his head was removed. Later it would be placed on a pike atop London Bridge while the quarters of his body would be sent to four different towns.
The crowd began dispersing; Margery drifted aimlessly among them.
'Tis all over then.
John Ball and Thurold, two who counted among the most important in her life, were dead. As she walked she noticed that her legs were surprisingly steady and that her mind was blank, that if she was feeling anything, she could not describe it. She paused, inhaled deeply and closed her eyes.
Then it happened.
She heard a voice. It might have been Thurold's or John Ball's or God's or the Devil's or simply her imagination, she couldn't tell. Or whether it was inside or outside her skull. Nor could she describe its tone. Mocking or triumphant or simply making a statement, as one would comment on the weather or the time of day?
The voice said, so very clearly, "As if you can kill an idea!"
With the words reverberating in her mind, Margery absently crossed the precincts of St. Alban's Abbey toward the massive cathedral. Although it was nearing Vespers, the emerald lawns were nearly deserted, as if this final act of bloodletting had left everyone exhausted or eager to hide their faces in shame.
Not even sure why she was here, Margery entered the ambulatory of St. Alban's Cathedral just as the Benedictine monks began chanting. She sank onto one of the benches intermittently placed along the walls and peered through the gloom to the altar. Its white cloth shimmered in the candle flame; the monks, swathed in their black capes and hoods, stirred the darkness with their rich voices. Praising God.
Folding her hands in her lap, Margery watched.
Does God even hear? she wondered. He certainly did not seem to listen to the pleas of the commons or to John Ball. Was it His plan that John be tortured and cut in quarters, and that the commons should be crushed like gillyflowers beneath their lords' boots?
She pondered these matters, but without emotion. Mayhap because they did not seem as real as had been that whisper: "As if you can kill an idea!"
Margery leaned her head and back against the cold stones. The monks' hymns must have lulled her because she fell into a half dreaming, half waking state, with that curious refrain drifting in and out of her consciousness, when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
She dragged herself back and looked up.
"I am sorry for your friend," Matthew said simply.
She blinked. Her lover didn't seem quite real either. She felt as though she were sleepwalking, even after he pulled her gently to her feet.
"I know things are wrong in England," Matthew said softly, as if continuing a previous conversation. "It saddened me to witness the hedge-priest's death, for he was an honorable man, in his own fashion. I know that he, your brother, all of them had some proper grievances. Such problems should be addressed, but in this England that may be impossible. I tell you true that it sits poorly on me that His Grace has so blithely gone back on his word. But what can I do? I am only one man—one man who is so weary, and so finished with it all."
Margery licked her lips. She wanted to tell Matthew not to worry, that everything was fine, that what they fretted about and imbued with such importance was just a stitch or two in an immense tapestry. It was not only death that was such a tiny, inconsequential thing...
"Sometimes I think England is truly a house divided," Matthew continued. In the darkness, she could hardly see his face, though his body language mirrored his lamentation. It had been a very long month, eviscerating the dreams of English men and women as brutally as the executioner had eviscerated John Ball's body.
"Our bishops mistrust both us and Parliament, thinking we threaten their material interests; our merchants think we threaten their civic privileges and monopolies, and the commons mistrust everything and everyone. Without trust as a foundation, mayhap 'tis just a matter of time before it all crashes down upon our heads."
"Aye," Margery murmured, standing to face him. "Though we cannot know. We are not soothsayers, are we?"
But Roger Bacon had been and he had predicted a preposterous future. As preposterous as the promise implicit in those mysterious words that had come to her?
Flames from St. Alban's altar candles flickered far in the distance. Light from a rising moon filtered through the stained glass windows to illumine the rows of monks chanting the versicles and their response. The monk's voices whispered round the shadowed columns, the tombs of the dead, the gilded and painted statues, before drifting to the raftered ceiling. Hard to imagine the barbarity that had just been perpetrated beyond these walls upon one of their own. Margery hoped that John Ball was included in their prayers. She would have to pay for masses for both him and Thurold and even for Fulco the Smithy, in case he had already joined them...
Margery raised her head to Matthew. "I love you so much it makes my heart ache," she whispered. Though that wasn't quite true. Margery loved him so much that it made her heart happy, just as that arcane whisper brought her, if not happiness, at least acceptance. She brushed away a strand of hair that had fallen over Matthew's forehead and allowed her palm to rest against his cheek, the roughness of his beard. Forty-four years old, two years younger than when his Prince Edward had died, and she was not so very far behind.
The remainder of their days, under the best of circumstances, could not be long. And must not be wasted.
"'Tis such a very ancient war, Meg. I do not know that it will ever end." Matthew placed his hand over hers, resting upon his cheek. "It is peaceful in Cumbria. Will you yet go with me?"
The monks had begun singing a final hymn.
Margery need not travel to Cumbria to find the peace she felt now—a peace that would surely fade as all emotions did. But she would hold onto it and nurture it as she would her herbs and flowers. And she would remember the whisper that she chose to view as a promise. Remember and hold onto it as surely as she would hold onto Matthew.
"As if you can kill an idea!"
Lacing her fingers in between her lover's, Margery and Matthew exited St. Alban's.
The End
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Page forward for an excerpt from
LORDS AMONG THE RUINS
The Knights of England Series
Book Five
~
Something nagged at Matthew Hart. As he watched Fulco the Smithy recite Robin Hood and the Monk, an image kept flitting through Matthew's mind, one he couldn't hold on to. What was it? Something... dark... something...
There it was, just a glimmering.
And then it slipped beyond his grasp.
The smithy stood in the center of Cumbria's Great Hall, legs planted, movements minimal. He possessed a certain stillness that Matthew recognized from a lifetime of mingling with fellow warriors. A concentrated stillness that, without warning—or upon command—could explode into violence. Matthew wondered whether Fulco had participated in any of England's chevauchees. Perhaps as a mercenary? Or as one of the blacksmiths who had been such an integral part of Edward III's war machine, repairing weapons and armor, shoeing pack and cart and war horses?
Suddenly he remembered: where he'd first seen Fulco the Smithy.
Twilight. Chaos. Dead bodies in the courtyard. Heads on spikes. Fires in outbuildings. Shouting to the milling rebels, "Have you seen a woman and a boy?"
Bury St. Edmund's Abbey.
The Peasants' Revolt.
Fulco grabbing his horse's reins. Piercing black eyes raised to Matthew's."Your lady and son escaped on horseback. They be London bound."
How had a stranger known his family's identities, or their whereabouts? In the aftermath of those terrible times, he and Margery had chosen not to re-visit the parts of their past that stirred the most unhappiness.
What secrets might his Meg be keeping?
"I took a lover," she'd once taunted.
That night as they lay in bed with Margery's head on his chest, his arms looped around her, Matthew said, "Tell me something."
"Aye." Margery tried to keep the wariness from her voice, tried to pretend that nothing had changed—when everything had.
"This Fulco the Smithy. I've seen the way he looks at you."
Margery pushed up so that she could better view her husband's face against the pillows. With only the faintest light from a slivered moon to ease the darkness, she felt somewhat protected from his scrutiny, though her nerves were afire. Which would never do. She must behave precisely as if she were innocent.
I am innocent!
"I've spent no time in the smithy's company. And surely you are imagining his interest." She ran a finger across his lips and said in a hopefully teasing tone, "My love, are you jealous? I'm flattered."
Matthew caught her hand. "And I see how you react to him."
Margery's throat tightened. She felt as if she could not breathe. As if she were indeed guilty.
"You're mistaken. I am courteous to everyone." She scooted back down to once more rest her cheek on Matthew's chest. So that he could not probe her expression for truths best kept hidden.
Matthew's heart thumped, strong and rhythmic, against her ear. Not as it would if he were angry. She slipped an arm across his abdomen. "Let us not waste time on such silliness."
"You told me once you'd taken a lover," he said, rubbing a tendril of her hair between his fingertips. "Was he the one?"
Oh! What should she say? She loved Matthew so very dearly. Before their marriage he'd shared everything, the horrors of the campaigns, the horrors of his actions, the holocaust that had been Limoges. He'd laid bare his soul as if to a confessor. But Matthew had not been seeking absolution. He'd merely wanted to face his past, shine the light on the hidden places, expose his shame to the air in order to heal. "This is who I truly am," he had been saying. "Will you love me now that you know? And if you don't, I will survive."
He asked so little of her in return.
To answer this one simple question.
"Was Fulco the Smithy your lover, Meg?"
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him the truth about that ancient relationship. But what then would happen? Their peace, the quiet joy of their love had been hard won. They'd buried so much pain; must it be exorcised again?
Margery struggled up and faced her beloved. "My heart," she breathed. She forced herself to look into his eyes in a simulacrum of innocence. "No. Never."
And in that moment it seemed so.
Matthew smiled, pulled her close... and pretended to believe her.
~
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Lords Among the Ruins
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Mary Ellen Johnson's writing career was sparked by her passion for Medieval England. Her first medieval historical, The Lion and the Leopard, was followed by The Landlord's Black-Eyed Daughter, a historical novel based on the Alfred Noyes poem, "The Highwayman." (Published under the pseudonym, Mary Ellen Dennis.) Landlord was chosen as one of the top 100 historical romances of 2013.
After taking a twenty-year detour in a quixotic quest to change the world—rather like Arthurian knights' quests to find the holy grail, which ended in similar failure—Mary Ellen has happily returned to historical fiction writing and her favorite time period, the tumultuous fourteenth century. Her five book series, Knights of England, follows the fortunes of the characters (and their progeny) introduced in The Lion and the Leopard through the Black Death, the reign of that most gloriously medieval of monarchs, Edward III, the 1381 Peasants' Revolt, and ends with the deposition and murder of Richard II in 1399.
There is nothing Mary Ellen loves more than bringing Medieval England alive for the reader. She particularly enjoys researching battles, campaigns, the daily lives of both lord and peasant, and trying to figure out our ancestors' thought processes, particularly how they viewed their world. Oh, and did she mention the castles and cathedrals? Mary Ellen likes to say her favorite place in all the world is standing before the tomb of the Black Prince in Canterbury Cathedral. (Hyperbole, of course, since Mary Ellen is not that well-traveled and her favorite places are probably wherever her kids and grandkids reside.)
However—and the very recounting gives her chills—a distant cousin recently shared the results of her years-long genealogical research on the family tree. When flipping back and back through the centuries, Mary Ellen began finding names that were hauntingly familiar—John of Gaunt, Edward the Black Prince, Edward II, Edward III, even Richard the Lionheart! All the historical characters she's spent a lifetime reading and writing about! How can that be? Genetic memory? Reincarnation? She has no idea but you can bet she'll be exploring the possibilities in future novels!
In the meantime, Mary Ellen hopes you'll enjoy reading T
he Lion and the Leopard, A Knight There Was, Within a Forest Dark and Lords Among the Ruins as much as she's enjoyed writing them.
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