‘Stop struggling or I’ll break your arm into bits.’ Serjeant-at-arms Lyons trailed the Elderman off by the arm to the stocks.
Assessor Miller looked over the skinny boys. Pity. None of them were fifteen or over. He opened his ledger and wrote down the sum owed. ‘Edward Smith, you are liable for four groats per person. And, I’m fining you one more for giving me grief.’
‘You don’t have the right!’ Ed said.
‘Pay now – or you’ll be rotting in Maidstone Gaol till you cough up.’
Ed walked past the forge, disgorged three shillings from a jar, dropped them into the fucker’s pudgy hands one by one. ‘One groat. Two groats. Three, four, five groats. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Satisfied?’
Assessor Miller nodded curtly and pocketed the coins. ‘Count yourselves lucky I’m a patient man.’
It took a little more coercion but Serjeant-at-arms Lyons shackled Abel into the stocks. He didn’t stint on the blows; making an example of this old slabber would ensure the cooperation of the rest of the villagers.
III
The white charger, Sleipnir, or Sleepy for short, champed at the bit. ‘Open your big gob,’ Wat said, and bitted it. He looped the bridle and reins over its huge head, mindful it didn’t like its ears being touched or its forelock ruffled. Every horse has its hates.
Hugging a heavy leather saddle, Harry opened the stable door and shuffled into the stall. Nick, his sixteen-year-old son, followed in his wake, carrying a horse blanket. He was a strapping lad, broad from shooting the short bow this last year, with the look of the Danes about him, the ghost of his dead mother haunting him.
Sleipnir glared at them and stamped a massive hoof down on the flagstones. A spark leapt from the shoe into piss-sodden straw.
‘Woah, there,’ Wat told the stallion, who did anything but live up to its ‘Sleepy’ nickname.
‘He has the Devil in him that horse,’ Harry said. God’s truth, he was scared stiff of the brute. It stood seventeen hands to the withers and had had it in for him since first day on the farm, two months ago. ‘The very Devil himself.’
Wat laughed. ‘You and me both eh, Sleipnir?’
The stallion whinnied as if in answer.
Nick handed Wat the blanket. ‘Why did you call him Sleipnir?’
‘That was his name.’ Wat flipped the blanket over the horse’s back. ‘Bought him cheap off a Lithuanian mercenary who lost his leg to rot. Told me Sleipnir was the horse of the god Woden and rode between the lands of the living and the dead, between heaven and earth.’
‘It’s a heathen name, son,’ Harry said, and crossed himself. ‘God save us.’
Nick patted the stallion on the neck. It threw its head up, fire in its eyes, but the lad persisted and it calmed down. Wat had told him all horses can smell fear and courage in your sweat; all horses and some men. He had learned a lot from Wat this last year and liked horse husbandry more than chasing chickens for eggs and milking goats – both chores were bloody woman’s work.
Harry handed Wat the saddle and stepped back out of harm’s way.
‘Take the reins, Nick,’ Wat said, and when the lad did, he flopped the saddle over the horse.
‘Did you hear the poll tax collectors are going house to house this time?’ Harry said. ‘Be here today or tomorrow.’
‘Never worry, Harry. We’ll keep you two out of sight of those money-grabbing bastards.’ Wat knelt down, reached under Sleipnir and cinched the girth, tightening it and holding so the stallion would relax, breathe out and he could tighten it a few more notches.
‘Will they hang us if they find us, Wat?’ Nick asked. ‘Father says they hang runaways.’
Wat stood up, took the reins. ‘They’re not looking for runaways here, Nick, so why would they find you – if you keep to the barn while the sun is up, and mind the horses?’
Harry shook his head. ‘You have fifty acres packed with sheep. And another virgate of crops. They’ll expect you to have help.’
‘At which point, of course, I’ll confess to hiding two runaway serfs from the Abbot of St Albans and let them arrest me. Stop worrying like an old woman.’
‘Stop worrying,’ he says. ‘Spoken like a free man.’ Harry skulked out of the stall.
Wat shrugged. Talking to Harry was like throttling a stinging nettle at times but he was a firm believer in that old soldier’s saying about not judging another man until you’ve marched a mile in his boots.
‘Sorry,’ Nick said, ‘He didn’t mean that. He was just letting off steam.’
‘Fair comment, Nick. A franklin can only imagine what it’s like to be a serf.’
‘We’re grateful to you,’ Nick said. ‘You sheltered us when no one else would.’ He would never forget how Wat rode up to them standing in the square on market day, begging for work, not coin; how Wat took pity on them and led them home, saving them from the sheriff who would arrest vagrants on sight because most were runaways from manors, abbeys or priories. To be a wandering villein was a fraught life, a snaking, muddy road upon which the perils of gaol, extortion by fine, return in chains, or dangling by the neck on a gibbet, were as constant as the fires of Hell to an unrepentant sinner.
‘I’ll not have you sing my praises, lad. I’m no saint,’ Wat said, and led Sleipnir out of the stall. At the barn doors he slipped a foot into the stirrups and hauled himself up into the saddle. ‘We’re away to work up a lather. Yah!’
Sleipnir took off from standstill to canter to gallop in the blink of an eye. Nick watched Wat valiantly clatter across the cobbles of the farmyard and disappear down the hedged lane before going back to his work. Some day he would be an archer. Ride into battle. Slay the Frenchies in droves. Serve his king well. There were those who laboured, which he hated; those who prayed, which he had no patience for; and those who fought. Wat had taught him how to fight, with the most powerful weapon of the age – the bow. The short bow, mind. It would be a few years yet before he could fully draw the war bow.
IV
Serjeant-at-arms Lyons led his lance up the hedged track to an outlying farm. He was well chuffed after administering a punishing beating to the Elderman, and looking forward mightily to invading a tavern and quaffing a few ales come eventide. They’d done most of the houses in Tonbridge and were making steady progress on the outskirts.
Nick was taking a break from mucking out, when he spied the wagon and the escort rumble up the lane. He sprinted to Sleipnir’s stall where Harry was filling a barrow with reeking pig shit. ‘Tax collectors. They’re here. What are we going to do?’
Harry blanched. ‘We’re going to stay put, and you’re going to keep it shut.’
‘What about Sophia?’ Nick was frantic. ‘She’s alone in the house.’
Harry took hold of his son’s arm. ‘We’ll keep watch, cross that bridge if needs be.’
‘I have to get my bow from the house!’ Nick said.
‘No time.’ Harry trailed Nick to the barn door.
Serjeant-at-arms Lyons dismounted. ‘Let’s get this over with, Miller.’
Assessor Miller reined the horses in and the wagon skidded to a halt outside the door of the farmhouse. He clambered down onto the cobbles and rapped on the wooden door. ‘Open, in the name of the King.’
Nick and Harry peered out of the barn.
A beautiful young girl, Wat’s only daughter Sophia, answered the door. ‘Hello. Can I help you?’
Serjeant Lyons ogled her. ‘Well lads, here’s a pretty rose of Kent! Step out where we can see you.’
Sophia obeyed, flushing.
One of the veteran serjeants wolf-whistled.
There was a cruelty in the laughter of these men Sophia had not heard before. She wished for father by her side. Their laughter weakened her, like a warlock’s hex, made her shrink into a helpless little girl again.
‘This is the farm of Walter Tyler?’ Assessor Miller asked.
Nick watched Sophia nodding. He was too far away to hear what was being said properly, only catching th
e odd snippet. He was shaking with rage. And as Wat often said, where there was rage there lay also courage – if you could use one to find the other. More than anything in the world he wanted to protect Sophia from these men. If the price was his life …? Amen; he would pay it, three times over.
‘How many are in your family, girl?’ Serjeant-at-arms Lyons enquired, taking a look into the shade of the farmhouse.
Sophia tore her eyes from the barn, answering. ‘Me and my father.’
Assessor Miller wrote that down in his ledger. ‘What about your mother?’
Sophia’s stare fell to the ground. ‘She died four years back of a fever.’ Nobody knew that she had died of the coughing plague. That was a family secret. You died so quickly of that plague you were gone before anybody noticed. Lots of people they knew just disappeared, as if taken by the angels, as if Christ had returned and it was the End of the World.
‘Mother dead.’ Assessor Miller noted. ‘Nobody else on the farm. Labourers? Servants?’
‘No, sir.’ She could lie well, had been practising on her father who was convinced she always spoke the truth. Her lies were to conceal giddy truths about trysts with Nick.
‘Where is your father? We need him to pay us the tax.’
‘He will be back soon, I’m sure.’
Nick saw a serjeant looming up right behind Sophia, close enough to smell her scent – meadow flowers in her long, golden hair. He tried to break away from his father. If he could lay his hands on the hayfork on the wall he would charge the serjeant and spear him.
Eyes on stalks, Harry slapped Nick, pressed a finger to his lips. ‘Shhh!’
Nick relented, was forced to watch on.
Serjeant Lyons asked: ‘What age are you girly – sweet sixteen?’
Sophia whirled around. ‘I am fifteen, sir.’
‘You look very womanly to me,’ Assessor Miller sneered. ‘You wouldn’t be trying to cheat us, would you?’
‘No sir.’
Serjeant Lyons laughed. ‘Funny how everybody is suddenly the magic age of fifteen lads! I wonder why that is? Is it because they avoid the tax, do you think?’
‘I was born in October thirteen hundred and sixty-six,’ Sophia stated. ‘I can read and write, and count.’
‘What do you offer as proof?’ Assessor Miller asked. Years of serving as Quest-monger, spying and informing on the good citizens of London, made it hard to believe anything anyone had to say was true.
‘My word as a Christian.’ Sophia crossed herself.
Serjeant-at-arms Lyons seized her by the arm. ‘That’s not good enough in the eyes of the law.’
Sophia struggled against the iron grip. ‘Let go of me!’
‘I’ll have to perform an examination of maidenhood.’ Serjeant-at-arms Lyons ripped open her dress, spilling her breasts.
Sophia screamed, tried to cover herself. Part of her refused to believe this was happening; it was as if her soul stepped out of herself and watched the body fly into a panic. ‘Let go. Let go!’
That was it! The final straw. Harry released Nick and they both plucked farm tools off the wall on which all the kit was hung. Nick chose the pitchfork, Harry two sickles.
Serjeant-at-arms Lyons yelled over her screams. ‘If I find you have had intercourse you will be taxed as a sixteen-year-old and fined for false testimony.’
Nick charged from the barn, ramming the pitchfork into the back of nearest serjeant. Plate armour alone saved the man’s life but the momentum of the thrust sent him sprawling. Nick hurdled the downed man and went after Sophia’s tormentors, yelling.
Harry attacked the serjeant on the ground before he could recover, swinging his scythes like a madman, the blades clanging off his helm, his breastplate, the chain mail on the arms.
Serjeant-at-arms Lyons whirled Sophia into Assessor Miller’s grasp, bellowed: ‘Come on then, boy!’
‘No, Nick,’ Sophia cried. She could not bear to see him hurt. She knew he was a lowly serf, unfree, a thrall really, but to look at him was to well up with warmth, to feel the world could be good, and to smile till it hurt.
One of the mounted serjeants spurred his charger into Harry; it head-butted him with a ridged chanfron on, cold-cocking him.
Serjeant-at-arms Lyons drew his falchion from its sheath – a wicked weapon, half sword, half axe.
Nick thrust the pitchfork at the would-be rapist. ‘Sophia!’
Serjeant-at-arms Lyons sidestepped the thrust, swung the falchion and cleaved the shaft off below the metal head. ‘Yield or die – your choice, boy?’
‘He yields,’ Sophia shouted. ‘Let him be.’
Nick glanced at Sophia, and seeing her hands wrapped as if in prayer, swung the shaft at the serjeant’s head.
Serjeant-at-arms Lyons stepped into the arc, right arm raised, splintering the shaft, and closed in to do some damage. He grabbed a hold of the lad by his doublet and thwacked him with the flat of falchion. Thunk, quick and hard as you like. Face good and bloodied, he let the dizzy fool reel away into the dirt from whence he’d come. Best to leave more than a joint of meat for the hanging. Folks liked it that way.
V
Sleipnir’s flanks were foaming with sweat; steam billowed off into the hedgerows and with it the acrid stench of horse. Wat had given the stallion its head and they’d thoroughly enjoyed the ride. It was as close to a charge as they got these days, though maybe that was a good thing. Peace – the absence of war. Peace – bought by blood and force of arms. It was a good thing. A bloody good thing! He leaned forward to slap the stallion on the neck.
Shouts coming from up ahead pricked Wat’s ears. And cry of pain, female, unmistakable. Eyes narrowing to arrow points, he dismounted and led the stallion up to the top of the lane. He spotted a wagon and a cluster of serjeants giving someone on the ground a kicking. Where was Sophia? He couldn’t see …
There! Far side of the wagon, Sophia was being held, mauled, man-handled by some fat fucker. Seeing red – the world dyed in archil, kermes and lac, a crimson flood – he released the reins, skirted the flank, and cracked the stallion on the arse. ‘Yah!’
As Sleipnir took off like a battering ram possessed, Wat shouldered through a hole in the hedgerow. He would get to the house, to his cache of weapons, and he would kill that man. He would kill him stone dead. On my oath, that man, and any other fool who has harmed her will die this day.
Blood up, Sleipnir charged into the yard, barged a serjeant to the cobbles, scattered the rest away from the huddled form of Nick. The stallion wheeled round and trotted into the stables, looking for oats.
‘Get a hold of that horse,’ Serjeant-at-arms Lyons ordered. He dragged up the winded man.
Wat stole round the back of his house, putting a strutting cock and two hens to squawking flight. He flung open a shutter at the back and slipped through a window.
Finding no oats, Sleipnir made another charge from the stables. Two serjeants had to dive out of the way. Snorting steam, the stallion barrelled into the lance’s horses, spooking three of them into stampeding away down the lane with it in the lead.
Wat lifted a dented shield off the hearth. He’d put the dent in it – it was a prized trophy, taken from the fat Duke of Anjou. Out of a chest by the stairs he plucked a sword in its scabbard. He drew the three-foot long blade. It was fullered, inlaid with silver scrolling, polished and razor sharp – old habits die hard – he worked the edges twice a week to calm his nerves. He kissed the cross-guard, the curved quillons, snapped his eyes shut. ‘St George,’ he prayed, ‘give this old man some strength.’
Outside, Serjeant-at-arms Lyons barked: ‘Get those bastarding horses back here.’
Three serjeants hared off after the runaways.
Wat dropped sword and shield out the window and slipped out. He picked up his arms, headed round the back of the house, and stopped at the far corner to reconnoitre the positions of the men, ordered his attack in his mind. A sword was a poor weapon against a man in plate armour. The odds were against hi
m. The look on Sophia’s face gave him the rage he needed to defeat doubt. It turned his stomach to see his daughter’s fear, her dress torn. If they’ve raped her … his little girl. What if they’ve done that? He gulped down a gag of gall, snatched a breath, and attacked.
Sophia saw her father creeping up on a serjeant. God had answered her prayers! She elbowed the taxman in the ribs, struggled to break free.
Wat struck the serjeant from behind, the sword clouting off the basinet, knocking the man senseless to the cobbles.
Serjeant-at-arms Lyons caught the attack in the corner of his eye, and instinctively drew his falchion.
‘Stop it!’ Assessor Miller slapped the girl round the face but the little bitch kicked him in the shin. It smarted. She clawed his face like a witch’s cat; it burned and he thumped her away from him. He felt blood boil to the surface from the scratches on his cheeks.
Wat had no armour so he had to make kills quick and clean. He was onto the next man in line before the clumsy fool could react, thumping him full in the face with the edge of the shield and mashing his nose into a mess of bone and pulp. As the serjeant staggered blindly away, he advanced on the next man.
‘We are the King’s tax collectors,’ Serjeant-at-arms Lyons yelled. ‘You’re under arrest!’
Wat recognised that voice. ‘Lyons!’
‘Serjeant. Walter. Tyler.’
‘Sophia – get behind me!’ Wat shouted.
Sophia went to the aid of Nick, who was in a heap, dazed, badly beaten. ‘Nick, Nick. You have to get up!’ She tried to help him to his feet, to no avail.
Assessor Miller took advantage of the lull to flit round the criminals to side with Serjeant-at-arms Lyons and the law.
Serjeant-at-arms Lyons circled Tyler, tightening his grip on the falchion handle. ‘Lay down your arms, Tyler!’
Wat laughed. ‘Lay down yours Lyons, and I’ll go easy on you.’
Three Lions of England Page 3