Part 53 (2/2)
”Or John Ball?”
”I 'm of Jack Straw's menye.”
”Good folk, good folk, to Smithfield,--do the King's bidding!” shouted another crier.
”Afore all I 'm King's man,” said a Kentish villein.
”And I!”
”And I!”
”G.o.d keep the King!”
These things, and more after this same manner, the people said one to another in the way to Smithfield. By New Gate they went, and Moor Gate and Alders Gate, for this Smithfield was without the wall beyond Saint Bartholomew's; a market square, wherein butchers slaughtered their beef, a foul, ill-smelling place; and every man that went thither on that June day was in some kind a butcher, with hosen bespattered with blood, and brown patches dried on tabard and courtepy. Neither had they cleaned their knives and knotted bludgeons, but came as they were to Smithfield, dull-eyed with wine and sleep.
”What is to be the end?” they said; and there were some whispered: ”'T were well if we had let be the Flemings”--
”Lay not that on us! 'T is the London men shall answer for 't.”
”I saw a-many men from Kent did”--
”Mark ye, brothers, 't is not the Flemings will undo us, but old Simon, the Archbishop. There was a foul deed.” So spake Hobbe the smith, and all they that heard him crossed themselves.
”Who saith we 're undone?” bl.u.s.tered a fellow out of Suss.e.x. ”Have we not the King's pardon, and villeinage is dead?”
Nevertheless, 't was a sober company choked the narrow streets and swayed about the gates pressing to Smithfield.
And now the King came forth from the Garde Robe, his white-lipped n.o.bles with him, and rode through Temple Bar and along the Strand past Charing Cross and John of Gaunt's blackened palace to the Abbey at Westminster. Mayor Walworth was with the King, and Salisbury and Buckingham and the other n.o.bles that had sheltered in the Tower, but they were not many, and they were very pale. Stephen walked with his hand on the King's bridle, and this was the last time he should do the King this service, but he was not aware, nor the King neither.
Nevertheless, Stephen knew that he must one day reckon with the n.o.bles; and if not with the n.o.bles then with the peasants. Howbeit, in this hour he took no keep of his own soul and body, but pondered how the quarrel should end.
There was little speech among the n.o.bles. These were brave men, but faint with much watching and bewildered. That all England should be turned up-so-down by peasants and common folk was a thing not to be believed; nevertheless, the n.o.bles knew that the Prior of Bury Saint Edmunds was slain by a mob near Newmarket, and also Sir John Cavendish, Chief Justice of England, who was on circuit in Suffolk, but the rioters overtook him hard by Lakenheath. They knew that Saint Albans was up, and already rumours were come up out of Northampton and Cambridge and Oxford. There was fear of Leicesters.h.i.+re and Somerset; what Yorks.h.i.+re would do might not be determined. 'T was whispered that many lords of manors and n.o.ble ladies wandered homeless amid the forests of Kent, bewailing their manor-houses sacked and burned. These things the n.o.bles pondered as they rode from the city to Westminster on Sat.u.r.day, being the fifteenth day of June in that year, the fourth of King Richard II.
Howbeit, neither at Westminster was found peace, for there came forth of the Abbey a procession of monks, penitents, bearing the cross. Then with groans and tears did these monks tell their tale:--
”O Lord King, the Abbey is defiled!”
”At the shrine of that most holy one, Edward the Confessor, blood is spilled.”
”Sire, avenge us!”
”Richard Imworth is slain, King Richard.”
”Richard Imworth, warden of the Marshalsea, is murdered, sire!”
”His hand was even on the tomb of the Confessor.”
<script>