Three Lions of England

by Cinnamond, Patrick

  Archbishop Sudbury’s choking death throes were pitiful.

  Wat was sickened to the quick. He’d seen a lot of men die before, but this – this is the worst death ever somehow. He knew why too. John had robbed Sudbury of his dignity, the last thing of value a man has on earth. To thieve that away in life, or in death, was the vilest crime, the gravest injustice of all.

  ‘Mercy!’ cried an old milkmaid, watching from behind a protective thicket of her own gnarled fingers.

  ‘For fuck’s sake John!’ Jack said, ‘Finish him off proper.’

  John stepped back, to take better aim. He lined the sword up on Sudbury’s neck …

  ‘Step aside!’ cried Wat. Before John could fuck it up again, he drew his sword, moved in and delivered mercy with a single ringing blow.

  XII

  ‘Mother?’ King Richard shouted, rushing into the hall of La Reol, called the King’s Wardrobe, his eyes full of tears. Bite back the tears! Do not cry! The King cannot cry. Swallow the brine down or you will be remembered as a snivelling brat.

  The doorman told him: ‘Your mother is safe and well, Majesty. It is her lady-in-waiting that is in dreadful shock.’

  King Richard ran up the main stairs, two-steps by two-steps, and flung open the door to her chambers. The room was crammed full of clothes hanging on rails, the ceremonial vestments of royalty, costumes for the different plays of state.

  Princess Joan was standing in a red samite shift by the window. She was flustered, anxious.

  ‘Mother? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, Richard. I am.’

  King Richard hugged her tightly to him. ‘Thank the Lord you are unharmed. I have been terrified.’

  ‘Fortune smiled on me.’ Princess Joan smiled, patted his head. ‘I was freed by the rebel captain again.’

  ‘Wat Tyler? Did he lay a hand on you? Molest you in any way?’

  ‘No, my son. He did not. We talked.’

  ‘You talked? He was profoundly silent in front of me.’

  ‘He talked to me. I found out what drove him to rebel. It may prove useful to you to know your enemy—’

  ‘Oh what does it matter, mother?’ King Richard buried his head in her bosom. ‘The Wheel of Fortune has turned. Regnabo. Regno. Regnavi. Sum sine regno – I have lost my kingdom today.’

  ‘No you have not!’ scolded Princess Joan.

  King Richard drew away from her. ‘You saw it yourself – the dirty rascals have taken the Tower. The King has no castle!’

  ‘All is well, Richard.’

  As if in a heady daze, King Richard gazed around at all the gold-braided costumes. They seem to mock him with their luxurious emptiness, their hallowed hollowness. He was haunted by the ghosts of majesty gone. ‘All is well? How, mother? The rebels have control of London. They have executed Sudbury and Hales. They have issued us with demands we cannot possibly meet.’

  Princess Joan said: ‘Sir Robert.’

  King Richard threw his arms up in despair. ‘What of him? I have heard nothing from him. He could be dead for all I know—’

  ‘Come out, Sir Robert?’ Princess Joan said.

  Sir Robert stepped out from behind a heavy velvet curtain – in the black robes of a Dominican mendicant. ‘I’m very far from dead, Majesty.’

  ‘Sir Robert?’ King Richard knuckled his eyes dry. ‘What were you doing behind there?’

  ‘What else would a friar be doing in a lady’s bedchamber?’ Sir Robert said.

  Princess Joan looked at Sir Robert and flushed. ‘Sir Robert has gathered your army in secret.’

  Sir Robert nodded. ‘We have eight thousand men at your disposal. All hidden in houses, barricaded behind closed doors, ready to muster on the streets at my signal.’

  ‘Eight thousand men, you say?’

  ‘Every one of them is well armed, worth five rebels.’

  King Richard shook his head. ‘The Kentish number in tens of thousands. The Essexman also. I saw it today at Mile End. And they say there are more coming from the shires. It is not enough, Sir Robert.’

  ‘My men have scouted the city. I know the strength and disposition of the enemy. While they get drunk and celebrate tonight we will launch a surprise attack.’

  ‘Fight in the narrow lanes? Against these odds. After they have filled their quivers with all the arrows from the Tower armoury? No. I will not countenance it, not even for a moment. We would lose. And our heirs would be dispossessed forever.’

  ‘Forgive me, Majesty. I heard a boy say he had already lost his kingdom today. The Wheel of Fortune had turned against him.’

  ‘Yes. So it has.’

  ‘The Wheel is always turning. When it turns full circle, if one is still alive, one’s fortune begins anew. Regnabo means “you will be king”. This time, you must fight to be king.’

  ‘What else is there to do but fight, Richard?’ asked Princess Joan. This brave knight Sir Robert was their saviour. She had shown him her favour, promised him her body, to lie with him, so that he would do everything in his power to win. There was no price she would not pay for her son, the King.

  ‘We will fight then.’ King Richard worried the fluff on his chin. ‘But we will not strike like thieves in the night. Their leaders want me to meet them at Smithfield tomorrow. That is where we will strike.’

  ‘The field of blood.’ Sir Robert smiled. ‘Poetic justice.’

  XIII

  ‘Death to Flemings! Death to the enemies of England!’ Sophia heard the shouts from inside Ruth’s house and leapt up to the window to see what was happening outside in the street.

  ‘What is it?’ Nick followed her. He saw four men-at-arms drag a woman out of the church opposite, down the steep steps, and into the road – force her to lie prostrate in the gutter …

  Sophia gasped as – arc of a sword, gushing blood – they hacked off the woman’s head.

  ‘Ruth?’ Nick yelled. ‘Come quick.’

  Inside the chapel of the Austin Friars, the old Abbot screeched at the melee of rebels attacking the refugees. ‘This is sacred ground. These people have claimed sanctuary.’

  ‘There is no sanctuary today for Lombards and Flemings, Father.’ Alderman Horn ripped the holy cross out of the praying girl’s clutches and backhanded her away from the altar.

  Like swotting a fly it was. As easy as executing the great traitor Richard Lyons had been earlier that afternoon. Dispensing justice was so liberating. Lyons had died protesting his innocence as all the most guilty do. There was no arguing against his guilt: he had been impeached by the Good Parliament for bankrupting the Exchequer. Everyone knew Lyons had been one of the fifteen on John Ball’s list; a London merchant, one of King John’s Drapers Guild stooges on the Privy Council, a tax-farmer, a money-lender – corruption itself. Everyone knew Lyons had managed to buy his freedom last year with the nod of “King John”. Now everyone would know that justice had been served on the Cheapside block, late, but better late than never. And the Victuallers Guild had delivered it. It would not be forgotten Alderman Horn had delivered it.

  Thomas Farringdon yanked a Fleming merchant off the rood, kicked him back into a pew, which toppled over.

  The merchant got to his knees, praying hands. ‘Take me, but let my daughter go. Have mercy. I beg you?’

  The Flemish accent was so thick and coarse. It warped English, which was common enough. Thomas Farringdon kicked the man in the face, laid him out cold. ‘That will teach you to learn to speak English properly.’

  ‘This is sacrilege of the highest order! You cannot do this!’ the Abbot declared. ‘Your souls will be damned forever.’

  ‘Hell can wait.’ Alderman Horn seized the sprawled girl by the hair – she was stunned, had wet herself – and dragged her down the aisle towards the entrance of the church.

  Mayor Walworth had sent their go-between, the bastard Farringdon, back with the message that there was no time to waste given the fall of the Tower. The Victuallers must strike now against the enemies of London, or forever h
old their peace.

  The massacre of the Flemings and the Lombards was to serve a two-fold purpose: one, it would cancel most of Victuallers’ debts; but more importantly, the Mayor was convinced executing the foreign merchants – drapers – would galvanise the citizens of the city into action against these rampaging, bloodthirsty rustic killers in their midst. If murder and rape were happening to the Flemings in their own homes and churches, it could happen to them. The cry would then sound: ‘To arms! To arms, citizens of London! Drive out the enemy! Free London! We will not allow them to sack and burn the glory that is New Rome!’

  From the first floor of her house, Ruth peered out her window, Sophia and Nick sharing her horror as men-at-arms dragged two more Flemings – a girl and a man – down the steps of the chapel into the street. She heard the cry of: ‘Death to the Lombards! Death to all Flemings!’ before the pair were brutally beheaded.

  ‘Ruth?’ Nick said. ‘Sophia is half-Fleming. We have to get her out of here!’

  Ruth shook her head. ‘No. The streets are too dangerous. Upstairs. The bedroom. There is a big wardrobe.’

  XIV

  Darkness was falling fast as rain from a thunder cloud, drawing a curtain over the day’s bloodshed. Three cawing crows wheeled in, flap-happy. The spikes up on Traitor’s Gate were full of new heads for the pecking. Shiny, juicy eyes.

  Sudbury’s blood on John’s hands was long dry, but his palms were sweating so his grip on the hammer was tacky. The hammer fell, driving the nail, tock! through the mitre, the wrinkled skin of the forehead and into the skull. ‘Did you feel that traitor?’ he said.

  ‘I think he’s beyond feeling now, John,’ Wat said, but Sudbury’s face was distorted with pain, the eyes were open, pupils wide, as if the nail did hurt, as if the man was still suffering in death. The thought troubled him, as did the fact that the man had been an Archbishop. God punished men who killed his Archbishops and his Saints. Even in mercy. God sent them to Hell.

  ‘If Wat hadn’t stepped up, you’d still be hacking away at his neck,’ Jack said, and took a drag of a bottle of wine.

  Nobody eyed John picking the severed head up by the right ear, and licked his lips.

  John mounted the ladder and clambered up to the head-spikes on Traitor’s Gate. He rammed the head down on a pike – a ghastly sucking sound like breath being drawn, and a gush of ichor down the pole. There! Pride of place. Beside the white face of Hales. And the blue face of Cavendish, sporting a crow for a hat. He punched the air and cried out: ‘Death to the traitors!’

  Abel, slouching against the parapet, echoed his cry with a drunken: ‘Death to the traitors!’ Then he slid down the wall, into a stupor.

  John climbed back down to the gate tower. ‘In spite of the Short-Arses deserting, we have won a great victory today,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow we will win an even greater one.’

  ‘The day certainly ended better than it began,’ Wat said, fiddling with the strap of his left couter – the leather had stretched and the elbow armour was loose.

  John nodded. ‘So, are you ready for the war the Lord chose you to fight, Captain Tyler?’

  ‘War?’ asked Wat. ‘I thought we were negotiating the peace.’

  ‘St Augustine declared the aim of all just wars is a greater peace,’ John said. ‘Tomorrow at Smithfield we will seize the King from the nobles by force.’

  ‘Seize the King?’ Jack said, and stood up quick-smart. ‘You are as mad, priest, as they say you are!’

  ‘You go too far, John,’ Wat added. ‘You said nothing of this to me.’

  John tutted. ‘You are not so naïve, Wat, to think that the King will concede all our demands, grant the charters and the pardons, and everyone will go home to live in peace and prosperity are you? Our comrade Jackass here might believe it, but not you.’

  Jack loomed over John, fists clenched. ‘Call me a loyal fool,’ he said through bared teeth, ‘but we seize the King over my dead body.’

  Nobody started growling.

  ‘Back off, Jack,’ Wat said.

  ‘Give me one good reason I shouldn’t send you to Kingdom Come?’ Jack said. ‘Go on – call me Jackass again. That’ll see you to the pearly gates.’

  ‘Jack …’ John stood toe-to-toe with the big drunken lunk, faced him down, goading him to breaking point ‘… Straw. Do you honestly think that the King is England, and the King’s word is law?’

  ‘The King’s word is law.’

  ‘What of Parliament?’

  Jack shoved John, back on his heels. ‘What of it, clever clogs, eh?’

  John came back at him strong, causing Nobody to snap at him. ‘Parliament is how the nobles control the King.’

  ‘Leave it out, ladies.’ Wat heaved Jack and Nobody back. ‘Enough! Or I swear I’ll knock your heads together.’

  John circled Jack as Wat held him back, and said: ‘Since the Magna Carta the King cannot rewrite the law without the approval of Parliament, and Parliament will never grant the changes. Now, do you see why we have to seize the King?’

  Wat shoved Jack back. He turned to John and said: ‘You should have made this plan clear from the start.’

  Jack rounded Wat, to get at John. ‘You have kept all of us in the dark. Deceived us.’

  ‘I deceived no one! Our goals remain the same, though the means may differ. When we have the King under our control we, the True Commons, will form a new Parliament, and lead our True King around the country granting charters of freedom to every village and shire. We will remake the laws of this land as we go.’

  ‘This smacks of treason,’ Jack said, and walked away to the stairs, dragging Nobody with him, still growling. ‘I will have no part in this.’

  Wat looked to the stairs. Jack was gone but for Nobody’s growls and barks. ‘If Jack reacts like this, how do you think all the rest of the people will?’

  ‘Wat – you don’t have to like what I am saying to know it is right. If we do not seize the King from the grip of the nobles, nothing in England can ever change. There can be no true justice. No true freedom. No true equality. Without these things there can be no true community.’

  ‘I see what you are saying, John.’ And Wat suddenly felt very alone, as if this knowing this truth somehow separated him from all other men – all other men, except John. ‘But, the nobles will go to war if we seize the King.’

  ‘If we succeed – we can fight them, with all the common people on our side. If we fail, they will make war on us, avenge themselves on us. You know what their justice will look like – you, me, Jack, all of us will be executed: drawn, hung, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered.’

  ‘I know.’ Wat looked up at Sudbury’s head on the spike. It was still dripping. ‘I know.’

  ‘Our noble lords won’t stop there … with torturing and killing us. No. They will massacre every soul who dared to hope. They will likely hunt down your daughter – as an accomplice to murder, to treason – and make an example of her, burn her at the stake as a witch like they did with Joan of Arc.’

  ‘That will not happen,’ Wat said. ‘I will not allow that to happen.’

  ‘Then do what the Lord needs you to do.’

  ‘John. I have always been a King’s Man. Through all of this. A King’s Man. I don’t know how to be anything else.’

  ‘Then be a true King’s Man,’ John said. ‘The King should know his people. We cannot let the people down. Suffolk, Norfolk, Surrey and Middlesex are marching on London. Sixty thousand more men will be here on Sunday.’

  XV

  ‘Havoc!’ cried Thomas Farringdon, and kicked the door of the tenement in. Playing soldiers, he rushed into the house, followed by two of Horn’s men.

  Upstairs, in her bedchamber, Ruth breaths became shorter, sharp gasps.

  A bow would be too unwieldy at this close range so Nick gripped the hilt of his drawn kidney dagger right tight.

  It was all tat in the place. Horn’s men left empty-handed and glum to pillage the next house down. Thomas Farringdon ha
d smelt something – cunt – and stayed behind. He mounted the stairs, charging up them two at a time, dagger ready. If he could just find himself a decent-looking Fleming whore to fuck ragged and then cut it would be the perfect night.

  Sophia crouched down, behind the dresses and robes hanging in the darkness of Ruth’s wardrobe. She did not want to hide. Nick had insisted: ‘A man protects his woman.’ She had resisted, until in the end he had begged: ‘Please, Sophia, I cannot bear you to be hurt. It will be all right.’

  Thomas Farringdon kicked the door of the bedchamber in and saw a boy and a woman standing in front of the bed.

  Ruth yelled: ‘Get out of my house!’

  Panic in the darkness. In the powerlessness of the darkness. Sophia saw the face of the tax collector. Ripping her dress. They would all have had her, taking turns. These men, these King’s Men. Because they could.

  ‘Give us a kiss, darling.’ Thomas Farringdon advanced on the woman.

  Nick waited until he man was in range and whirled the dagger into his side.

  Thomas Farringdon’s plate armour warded the blow. He roared: ‘I’ll kill you, boy!’

  Nick slashed at the looter’s face, but the man caught his wrist with a fist of steel, and with a painful jerk, twisted his arm round his back.

  Ruth knew how to throw a punch, and did, but Thomas Farringdon slapped the woman away. ‘Let go boy, or I’ll break your arm.’

  Sophia wanted to scream, protest, to cry out: ‘Leave us alone!’ But she had no voice. Her voice had been stolen.

  Something cracked in Nick’s shoulder. Pain ripped through his arm, his grip went and the dagger dropped to the floor.

  Thomas Farringdon kicked the blade across the room under the wardrobe and struck the boy behind the ear, a knockout blow with a gauntlet on.

  Ruth jinked round the man, making for the dagger.

  Thomas Farringdon grabbed her by the arm. ‘Not so fast. We need to take it nice and slow.’

  Ruth punched him in the eye.

  Thomas Farringdon slapped her, threw her onto the bed, and held her down while he fumbled his manhood out.