Three Lions of England

by Cinnamond, Patrick

  The cry on everyone’s lips around him was: ‘Smash the Savoy!’

  ‘What’s this Savoy – why does it need smashing?’ Harry asked a furious milkmaid walking next to him in these high wooden clogs that looked like boats on her feet.

  ‘Are you stupid?’ the milkmaid replied, ‘It’s only the palace of the biggest traitor of them all – King John, the bloody Duke of Lancaster.’

  Harry shrugged. ‘We don’t know about the Savoy and such in Kent.’

  ‘You fucking serfs know nothing! You Saxons are all so slug-witted!’ The milkmaid laughed at him, and joined the people pouring into a gaping hole in a high wall – the gates of a great mansion.

  No one was going anywhere else so Harry followed them into the grounds of what was the Savoy Palace. Inside the walls, the hedge-lined pleasure-gardens surrounding the palace were huge; trees and shrubs partially hide the full front of the house from his view. Eeeooiii! Three young, giggling girls chased a screeching, panicked peacock through a bed of pink roses, across a manicured lawn, and nearly into Harry. All were after an eyed tail feather. Eeeeeooooooiiiiiii!

  Harry walked through the gardens up to the Gothic palace just as fifty laughing teenage urchins starting stoning in all the vast arched, diamond-latticed windows of King John’s unrivalled stately palace. The smash-tinkling of falling glass. He felt like telling the lads to stop, that there wasn’t much beauty in this world, but that would have been pointless and foolish. The world was wasted on the young.

  Alderman Horn valued the damage the boys were wreaking at a hundred silver pounds. But that was as nothing compared to what the Duke’s losses would total at the end of the day. He had his instructions from the Mayor. This was to be a punitive fine for the crime of trying to usurp the Good Parliament, and the Mayor of London in 1377, stealing away the liberty of the Speaker of Parliament, and placing power in the clutching hands of a King’s Marshal, Henry Percy, the Marcher Earl, Duke of Northumberland, the jumped-up toad-spawn of William the Conqueror’s bloody cook.

  When Alderman Horn found that all the Duke’s servants had wisely run off, he had issued the order that all the Duke’s vanities – his priceless tapestries, his Eastern silk gowns, hunting furs, the velvet curtains for the windows, all his finest draperies and naperies – all of it, was to be heaped on the fire. A small army of city trades-men and trades-women were merrily ferrying combustibles to the vast bonfire and gleefully hurling them on.

  In the Duke’s bedchamber a hawker swung a hand-axe into the ornate headboard of the four-poster bed, chipping a chunk out were the heraldic shield was carved nice and proud. ‘Must have cost a pretty penny – out of my taxes! You thieving cunt!’

  Down by the river, a tanner, his skin half-cured like a hide, his hair gone to strands from the trade, ground a pair of green gem earrings to dust in a mortar with a pestle. Some fancy fool of a tailor told him they were called emeralds. He didn’t give a flying fuck. They were going in the river when they were dust, like all the other jewels from the bedchambers! What did tailors know anyway? Took seven tailors to make a real man.

  In the Savoy’s stable block, a master-fuller ran a billhook into the neck of a stalled prize stallion. Worth six thousand marks a war-horse like you! Eat this, you spoilt fuck! The fearsome beast, trained to charge, kick, stamp, kill, glared him with surprised, wide eyes as the wind hissed out of the bleeding holes in its neck. It sagged, suddenly dragged the pole out of his hands and behind the gate. That was the twelfth horse of the Duke’s the master-fuller has dispatched. I have cost you a fortune, King John of Spain! A hundred times a hundred more than he would earn in his lifetime. That was something to be proud of! A true tall tale to tell his grandchildren. He licked his dry lips, tasted blood – his face was dotted with a fine mist of blood from the slaughtering.

  Seven flesh-mongers from Smithfield Market had forced their way into the cellar. They thought they had died and gone to Heaven upon discovering tons of Gascon wine, port from Portugal, sherry from Navarre. They were ale drinkers, only two had ever tasted wine before, but they cracked open the casks and began in earnest the longest and best drinking session of their short lives.

  “King John” was in Scotland. There were no servants left at the palace to execute in his stead. So, Alderman Horn had instructed his men-at-arms to make an effigy of the Duke, by stuffing one of his gold-braided jackets full of coverlets and binding it with string. They had slung a rope over the bow of an elm tree by the edge of the garden, near the river, and hung “the Duke” high. A row of archers from Essex were loosing at the swinging torso. Three misses. Arrows splashed into the river. Then one hit the proxy chest. The people roared their approval. They were glad to have something of his person to vent their rage on. It was a wise move to fashion the effigy. The rage of the London mob can go any which way. Especially when they have waited four long years for their vengeance.

  Harry wended his way round a bunch of masons and wrights swinging their hammers and axes, grunting and sweating and cursing, into a set of wooden chests, and chairs. Splinters flew; he stepped over a few big slivers of wood and walked into the great hall of the Savoy. The height of the arched ceilings – huge, massive, soaring like Canterbury cathedral! He was awestruck. He wandered round and wondered how could one man possibly afford to live in a palace like this? He felt pangs of envy twist his insides like a famine hunger. How could a man live like this while other men live in wattle-and-daub hovels made of cow shit? Had they no shame? No guilt? How was this noble in any way?

  ‘What are you doing in here, serf? Out!’ someone shouted at him.

  Harry’s gaze dropped down to earth with a bump. He saw a three fierce-looking serjeants-at-arms trailing grey powder away from three big barrels. His nose wrinkled at the heavy cloying smell of sulphur in the air. ‘So sorry, sir,’ he said, bowing his head to placate them, as he had done all his sorry life. Except – for the fight on Wat’s farm. Then, he had stood his ground.

  ‘Be off with you, you rustic fool!’ shouted Thomas Farringdon, bastard of Lord Farringdon, and the man in charge of laying the black powder fuse. His illegitimate connection to one of the most powerful mercantile dynasties in the London commune had earned him many friends, among them Aldermen Horn and Sybyle. That was why he was here, up in arms, demolishing the Savoy. That, and a personal quarrel with the traitor, Treasurer Hales. He would have full recompense from the Prior of the Order of St John for the seizure of his tenements and the chattels within, or his head on a pike!

  Harry staggered away, nearly fell over a trip-step into the kitchens.

  ‘Have a nice trip?’ said Matt the Grocer, the only other man in the room, and laughed.

  Harry frowned. ‘Shut your mouth.’

  Matt the Grocer staggered up to the newcomer and handed him a bottle of wine. He was a market vendor by trade, but he’d always hankered to be a vintner. ‘Have a drag, mate? Great stuff this, from Castile, on the wings of war.’

  Harry gripped the neck of the bottle and chugged a long swig. He’d only ever tasted a bottle of wine before at Wat’s. This here stuff was smoother, burnt the back of his throat on the way down bad as vomit did on the way back up, but the alcohol hit the spot. ‘Not bad!’

  Matt the grocer wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and took the bottle back. ‘Whole cellar is full of wine. Expensive Frenchie stuff. There’s a whole lot of butchers down there guarding it, in their cups …’

  Harry asked: ‘Could I have another drink, vintner?’

  Matt the Grocer shrugged. ‘Name’s Matt. Matt the Grocer to my mates. And, I’ll give you all the drink you can down in a day – if you help me out?’

  ‘What do you want of me?’

  ‘I can’t carry all these out of here without being rumbled.’ Matt the Grocer opened his shirt and pulled out a shiny silver-gilt plate, a chalice, and a tangled trail of gold, jewelled necklaces.

  Harry gasped. He had never seen anything so rich.

  ‘Take a couple for me.’ Matt
the Grocer shoved the necklaces into Harry’s pockets.

  Harry felt uneasy taking the necklaces, and a gold plate. This was looting. This was theft. It had been forbidden. But, this was worth a lot of money. Enough to buy freedom. Enough for a spread, a future for Nick. What was a man without land? How could he hope to live? Land was life, wealth and health. Land gave a man freedom. Nick needed his own land to keep a wife and a family. He slid the gold plate into his shirt.

  ‘When we get out, I’ll split the lot with you, right?’ Matt the Grocer said.

  Harry followed Matt the Grocer out of the kitchen, into the hallway.

  ‘Just walk slowly,’ Matt the Grocer told him. ‘Easy does it – out of the house, the whole way out of the grounds.’

  Harry felt the full weight of his guilt. He felt people were looking at him as they crossed the gardens, heading for the gate. He was sweating, drips running down the small of his back.

  Thomas Farringdon had ended the fuse in the middle of the garden, at what he reckoned was a safe distance from the blast to come. He recognised the serf who had trespassed into the room where they were setting the powder slink by him. Good thing the dolt avoided his gaze, suitably ashamed of himself.

  Matt the Grocer started to whistle a tune. A silver goblet slipped out of his shirt and landed on the lawn with a clunk. He wanted to tear off, like a hare, but he kept walking, simply veered in another direction to make it seem that it wasn’t him who’d dropped the trinket.

  Harry was walking right behind him – nearly tripped on the goblet.

  A crow-eyed woman nearby shouted: ‘Thief!’

  Matt the Grocer turned and yelled at Harry: ‘Stop, thief!’

  Harry realised – with a sickening lurch of his stomach – they were pointing at him.

  Thomas Farringdon drew his sword and sprinted over from the fuse to make the citizen’s arrest. He hit the skulking no-good serf over the head with the flat of the blade, knocking him to the ground, dazed. He fished in the man’s pockets for more thievings, and pulled out the necklaces. ‘Caught red-handed! The penalty for looting at the Savoy is death. We will hang you from the nearest tree.’

  Matt the Grocer slipped away, made himself scarce.

  Harry was stunned, bleeding copiously from a wound on his forehead, but he had enough wit to writhe against the serjeants as he was hoisted off the grass. ‘Let go of me!’ He struggled against his wrists being bound behind his back. ‘Let me go, let me go, let me go!’ – to no avail. They had him, tight. With this realisation came the awful weakness of submission.

  Thomas Farringdon trailed the thief down to the river to find Alderman Horn. ‘We’ve caught ourselves a thief!’

  ‘Cut the effigy down, men!’ Alderman Horn ordered. ‘We’ll hang him from the tree.’ This was good fortune, indeed. Audentes fortuna iuvat! A death served the people’s need for vengeance much better than shooting and bashing an effigy.

  The vision in Harry’s right eye was clotting red, but he saw the jacket on the rope being cut down, hit the ground. He would be swinging up there all too quick. He fell to his knees. ‘Don’t kill me, sir. I know you from Greenwich as Alderman Horn. I am one of Wat Tyler’s right-hand men.’

  ‘Then thief, you knew full well what the punishment for the crime of looting was – and stole anyway.’ Thomas Farringdon kicked the thief in the stomach, grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him into the shadows under the hanging tree.

  The men-at-arms slipped a noose around the thief’s neck. One of them threw the end over the bough. A good throw.

  ‘Forgive me. Forgive me. Dear God, forgive me?’ Harry was crying. ‘I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Fetch my horse over here!’ Alderman Horn called to his squire, who obeyed him.

  ‘Don’t kill me, sir?’ sobbed Harry. ‘I beg you, sir. I beg you. Beg you? I have a son who needs me.’

  ‘Say your prayers, thief. There can be no mercy shown.’ Alderman Horn mounted his horse.

  ‘Here.’ Thomas Farringdon handed him the rope up, and went back to mind the thief.

  Alderman Horn tied the rope around the pommel. He backed the horse down to where the thief was a collapsed heap on the ground. ‘Get him on his feet for the dance.’

  The men-at-arms stood the limp thief up.

  Alderman Horn spurred his horse forwards. He allowed himself the fantasy that he was about to hang John of Gaunt, not a peasant, and shuddered with what was almost sexual relief. The rope went from slack to taut in a second and the thief was drawn up into the air by the neck quickly.

  The pressure on his neck; red-hot thorns, red light, there was nothing but red light. They had set him on fire! He was gasping for breath, but couldn’t breathe, choking on his tongue. He felt his body fight wildly to be free of bonds, legs kicking out, kicking, kicking …

  Thomas Farringdon laughed at the silly jig hanging men do. He had seen a fair few criminals hanged on Tower Hill. This would likely go on for some time, the jig getting slower and slower as if the man was getting drunker and drunker as the dance wore on. Most public hangings were from gibbets, with a drop to snap the neck of the victim. There was no merciful fall here, the looter’s fitful fate was slow, agonising strangulation.

  XII

  Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, Head of the Holy Order of the Knights Templar, had consecrated this church, the Temple of God, in 1185. After the Templars were abolished in 1307, Edward II had given it to their rivals, the Knights Hospitallers. The Holy Order of St John saw fit to farm the Temple to colleges of lawyers. Here was where they schooled these barristers to be the thieves of what is right for ordinary people. Here was where they learnt to be despoilers of the Common Law, protectors of the rich and their property against the rights of the people. Here was where these liars practised their black arts, the seat of power, the highest court in the land, the King’s Bench.

  John and his Franciscans were here now to cast these thieves of justice out!

  A huge crackling fire raging outside the Temple Church, the round nave an exact replica of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. All the legal records – the case histories of the Inner and Middle Temple, the rules of law – were going up in smoke. John had started the conflagration with a prayer and the ceremonial lighting of a single court roll and tossing it on a pile of memoranda the Kentish under his command had dumped in the street.

  Fire was fascination. Stood in a ring of three hundred of his True Commons, principally the men from Tonbridge, Hadlow, and Maidstone, John watched solemnly as the noble idea of justice burned, the flames shrivelling the parchment, devouring the words inked on the paper, blackening the law of the land to flakes and ashes which rose on the drafts of heat into the air and scattered everywhere like black snow. When they were done with the papers, and had dealt with the damned lawyers, they would burn the buildings, all save for the original church. The house of prayer.

  ‘What do you want us to do with Chief Justice Cavendish?’ Abel whispered to John. ‘Ed is holding him and the lawyers in the nave. They are all claiming sanctuary.’

  ‘You have an axe.’

  Abel laughed. ‘I do.’

  John nodded. ‘Fetch the Chief Justice out onto the steps. Let’s see how sharp your old axe is.’

  Chief Justice Cavendish knew the rebels were executing all the lawyers they could find, but had not hidden away when he heard news that the rebels had entered London. Other high officials had fled the Temple precincts with their students. The cowards! He had stayed in his offices, working on a case, stroking his beard in contemplation as was his wont, until he heard the first catcalls of a mob coming up Fleet Street. Others had followed his example. Over the roar of a thousands of voices, he announced to his staff that he advocated facing the rebels in the Temple Church itself. ‘We will test the ancient right of sanctuary,’ he said. ‘The law will protect us there for a period of forty days. The fine for violation of sanctuary in the Temple is the same for that of a cathedral or an abbey – one hundred shillin
gs. Anyone committing such an act of violation will be excommunicated. We will place our faith in the letter of secular and ecclesiastical law, as men of the law have always done.’

  Twelve fine men, a jury of sorts, had followed him into the Temple. To the rebels’ terrible shame, and his great shock as lord high judge of men, all were now bound and gagged, held captive at sword-point and in fear of their lives. He had argued with the rebels that his testimony as Chief Justice would ensure they would pay severely for this assault on the officers of royal justice! It was a priest who had battered him down and gagged him. A priest, be damned! Impudent fellow said his name was John Ball – for the record.

  Abel seized the Chief Justice by the crook of the arm and helped Ed lead him round the effigy-tombs of crusading knights, and out of the Temple. The old man was puffed stiff with pride as he was marched out into the open for all to see, but Abel thumped him in the guts to get him to bend at the knee, and then kicked him onto the ground. Abel showed no mercy, as he had been shown no mercy by the tax collectors. Next to the King, this man represented the law of the land. When they executed him there would be no law, no government, no more lies, no more taxes, no more theft from the common people.

  John held up his hand to heaven and gave a benediction: ‘And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seat of those who sold doves, and he said unto them, It is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves. Amen!’

  Ed held the Chief Justice down, head laid prone over the edge of the top step to the Temple, while Abel lined up the arc of the axe to neck.