FOR MONTHS Joan had wondered how Thomas fared, deep within the demons' camp. Now she wept in sorrow as St. Michael stood before her, telling of Thomas' surrender to the demon Margaret.

"How can he have allowed himself to be so seduced?" she said, clasping her hands before her as she knelt.

Thomas is a man, and weak in the ways of the flesh. He does not have the strength of your virginal flesh. The demon has convinced him that she is pure and pood, and Thomas believes her.

"Then we are lost." Joan had no way of understanding that the archangel was not as distraught at Tom's situation as he appeared to be.

Anger seethed out toward her, and Joan quailed. "Forgive my doubts, blessed saint!"

Do not think that we have not planned for this.

Joan was so terrified by the archangel's anger that she could not answer.

Thomas only does what we expected. Soon enough he will learn of the extent to which he has been betrayed . . . and then . . . then there is always the great Secret, waiting to be revealed.

"Great secret, blessed saint?"

Now amusement radiated toward her, and Joan felt the goodness of the archangel's benevolence.

Thomas is a Beloved. On that day, the day when he learns what that means, and what awaits him, and how he has been betrayed, then Thomas will not fail you nor me. Believe it. "Most assuredly, Blessed Saint Michael."

It is a most seductive Secret, Joan, and Thomas has already shown himself readily enough seduced. "Your paths are most wondrously wrought, blessed saint."

St. Michael thought about that last remark, wondering if Joan wasn't trying to pretend a little too much understanding. Be still, Joan. I must speak to you of a thing other than Thomas' weak flesh.

"Yes, blessed saint?" Joan said.

I have already spoken to you of the significance of Orleans.

"Yes, blessed saint."

Soon one of the damned Englishmen will lead an army against Orleans. They will attempt to strangle that proud city with afoul siege. It is time to make a first strike. You shall tell Charles that you will lead the French army to Orleans, where you shall raise the English siege. It shall be a magnificent victory.

Joan said nothing, but raised her clasped hands before her face as she stared at the archangel with shining, fanatical eyes.

After Orleans you will ride to Rheims, where you shall crown Charles king of France.

"Blessed saint!"

From that time, your victories shall be legion. You will drive the English from this land, and then . . .

"Yes, blessed archangel?"

Then, once France has roused behind you, you shall lead the armies of God across the seas and into the den of the Demon-King himself.

Joan was so overcome with awe and humility that God had chosen her for this cause, that she could not speak.

Beware, Joan. There are many who conspire against you.

"They shall not harm me. I have their measure."

Ah, Joan, I pray that it be so. But this Demon-King is cunning beyond our understanding. What seems like trap might be clear path, and what seems like clear path might lead to death.

He paused, and considered the girl before him. There was something else she needed to be told, but it should not be he who would do the telling.

As Joan stared at the archangel she was amazed to realize that two glowing figures stood before her. At one moment there had been just St. Michael, the next...

"Blessed Saint Gabriel!" she cried, and bent her forehead to the floor, now almost completely overcome.

Blessed child, said Gabriel, there is much mischief about, as well you know, but I fear that you may not recognize the worst of it.

Joan remained silent, waiting for the archangel to finish.

Beware Catherine, Gabriel continued, for she is evil beyond compare.

"Most blessed saint," Joan whispered, "I have felt her vileness." She tried to quash the smugness that welled within her, but failed miserably. She resolved to say a prayer for Catherine's sluttish soul.

She is cunning, and will trap you, said Gabriel.

"With your help," Joan whispered, "I will not allow myself to be trapped." She was strong. She would prevail. She knew it.

You are sweetness personified, Gabriel whispered into her mind, and with her head still bowed, Joan could not see that the archangel's hand hovered over her head ... and now down her back, barely above her body, and now close to the side of her robe where swelled her breast...

She moved slightly, and the hand sprang back.

Michael resumed. You are God's own, Joan, and as you lead the French to victory you shall carry the mark of His favor.

There was a change in the light, a subtle dappling, and before Joan could even draw a breath of surprise she saw that a massive square of white cloth had appeared on the floor before her.

It was a battle standard.

There was a design embroidered in its center, and Joan had to squint a little in the glow of the archangels to make it out.

At the top-center of the design was a face wearing great and utter fury, and Joan understood this face to be that of the King of Heaven. Underneath this face stood two archangels: St. Michael and St. Gabriel, and in their arms they held the earth. About all were woven fleurs-de-lis—Charles' own emblem.

Carry that standard, said the archangel Michael, and all shall fall before you.

"Charles will resist," Joan said. "He is weak."

You must make him strong, said Gabriel. Tell him that on your march southeast a miracle will take place to further demonstrate that you and lie walk m God's grace and that ultimate victory shall come about.

"Blessed saint, what miracle?"

Bending close, the archangels told her.

HOLY WEEK and the Easter celebrations approached, and London was crowded with pilgrims, pedlars, traders, thieves, prostitutes and every rank of society between peer of the realm and homeless riffraff. Among all the repentant—and unrepentant—sinners who pushed their way through one of London's eight gates was a black-robed, hard-faced Dominican.

Prior General Richard Thorseby, recently arrived from the continent, had a wad of documents under his arm that he dare not entrust to the two friars who now escorted him. Thorseby walked with a pronounced limp, the remaining vestiges of his frostbite, and his cheeks were wan and sweating, a legacy of the rough Channel crossing.

Infirm in body he might be, but there was nothing weak or wan in the determination of his mind, or in the belief in the righteousness of his cause.

Thorseby made his way first to Blackfriars, the London home of the Dominicans. Set into the western wall of London, and bounded at its north by Ludgate prison and at its south by the gray waters of the Thames, Blackfriars was a huge, rumbled mass of dark and forbidding buildings, and Thorseby felt at home here as nowhere else. But he did not linger.

Having briefly greeted the prior of Blackfriars, and then taken some refreshment, Thorseby made his way to the small pier in the southern wall of the friary and boarded a rowboat.

He sat down, not greeting the oarsman, and carefully wrapped his cloak about him.

The boat moved slowly upriver, the northern bank of the Thames on Thorseby's right hand.

He kept his eyes ahead the entire trip, save for when the boat passed the Savoy. There, Thorseby turned his head and stared at the magnificent palace rising behind its river wall.

Are you there? he thought. Enjoying your last, lingering days of freedom?

The oarsman continued to row, and the boat turned south with the bend in the Thames.

Eventually the palace at Westminster hove into view, and Thorseby's grip tightened in its hold on the edge of the boat.

 

 

RICHARD ADMITTED the Prior General only with reluctance. The man depressed him, and always looked upon him as if he knew Richard's innermost and most deviant sins ... and that irritated Richard.

But the Prior General had sent word that he had important information regarding Bolingbroke's household, information the king would most surely appreciate, and so Richard had finally acquiesced.

"Dear Lord," he muttered to de Vere, sitting next to him on the dais in the Painted Chamber on a chair so intricately carved it was almost a throne in its own right, "why couldn't he have picked a less hectic time?"

De Vere smiled, and laid a hand on Richard's where it rested on the arm of his throne. "If he gives us something with which to attack Hal, my dear sweet boy, then there should be no time too hectic for us to see him."

"True," Richard said, thinking about admonishing de Vere for calling him a "dear sweet boy" before deciding it wasn't worth the effort. Besides, he rather liked it, and it was far better to think about how he might punish Hal when he finally had him in his power. Richard sighed quietly, wishing he could have moved against Lancaster and Bolingbroke long before, but both men—and their coterie of allies—were still too powerful for him to attack without very good cause.

Bolingbroke was far too popular with the ever-cursed mob, and Lancaster still commanded too much respect among the other nobles for any to move directly against them.

Still, Hal's time would come ... and Richard did not think it would be much longer in the coming.

He wondered vaguely who it was had done away with Gloucester and Arundel, so saving himself the trouble, then his mind snapped back to Bolingbroke as his eye caught movement at the far end of the chamber.

"I want a charge of treason," Richard said, as Thorseby's black limping figure entered the far door of the Painted Chamber, pausing to bow deeply.

"A charge of picking his nose is going to be enough if it gives us cause to take Bolingbroke," said de Vere. His beautiful dark eyes gleamed even brighter than usual, and he leaned forward very slightly in his chair as Thorseby continued to walk toward them. "I'd prefer treason" said Richard.

"Your grace," de Vere murmured as Thorseby approached, "may I suggest we take whatever he offers?"

Thorseby halted before the dais, and de Vere smiled genially. "Prior General," he said, "your presence, as always, is the greatest of gifts to my dear lord, as to myself."

Thorseby forced a returning smile and inclined his head very slightly in acknowledgment. Lord Jem, how be despised these two sodomites.

He spoke some general pleasantries and flatteries, then got straight to the point as he saw irritation and impatience spread in equal quantities across Richard's face.

"Your grace," Thorseby said, inclining head and shoulders this time, "I come before you this most holy of days to petition you for a special favor."

Richard almost snarled at the disagreeable man. No charge of treason against Bolingbroke then? He just wanted a favor?

"My Lord Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, has taken into his household a most evil man."

Richard's face lost some of its anger, and he sat a little straighter on his throne. "Aye?"

"Bolingbroke has, as his personal secretary, a man called—"

"Thomas Neville," said Richard. "Yes, yes, get on with it, man."

Thorseby pursed his lips and sent Richard an irritated look of his own. "Yes, Thomas Neville. As you must know, Neville was once a member of my Order—"

"Until he found he preferred fornicating to praying," de Vere said.

Richard laughed, enjoying the mortification on Thorseby's face.

Thorseby took a deep breath. "Yes, until he found he preferred the sins of fornication. Your grace, it has come to my attention that Neville is a most dangerous man, and I would request your favor in granting me aid to bring him under the disciplinary rule of my Order."

"A most dangerous man?" said de Vere very softly. He, also, was now perched on the very edge of his chair, as if he thought to spring forward at any instant. "In what manner?"

"I suspect Neville of the most profound heresy," Thorseby said. He paused for effect. "As well as treason."

Silence.

"Heresy?" said Richard. "Treason?"

"Indeed, your grace. For many months I have suspected that Neville might well be associated with the Lollards and their arch-heretic leader, John Wycliffe. After all, he does reside in Lancaster's household, and we all know—"

"Get on with it!"

"But what I did not realize until most recently," Thorseby continued, "was that while Neville was in Europe he not only consorted with demons—"

Both Richard and de Vere laughed, if a little uneasily.

"—but also consorted with Etienne Marcel, who I am sure you are aware was—"

"Marcel?" Richard said, glancing at de Vere. "The instigator of the Parisian rebellion?"

"The very same, your grace. The man who suggested that power be taken from the king and be given to the commons."

"And you have proof of Neville's association with Marcel?" de Vere said.

"Aye, my lord. A witness to attest to the contractual bond between them. Your grace and my lord, undoubtedly Neville is committed to furthering the same cause here. He is dangerous in the extreme. It would surely be to your betterment, as well that of my Order, if Neville be taken into custody."

There was a silence as Richard first stared at Thorseby, and then at de Vere.

"Perhaps so," de Vere finally said slowly. "But I think it would be best if, for the moment, Neville be arrested only on a charge of heresy. I do not doubt your charge of treason, Prior General, but if Neville be involved, then what of others within the Lancastrian household? Lancaster? Bolingbroke?"

"And if we take Neville on charges of stirring the masses into treason against their king," Richard continued, "then we forewarn Bolingbroke and Lancaster before we have the evidence to move against them as well. But if, for the moment, we merely aid the good Prior General to extricate Neville from Lancastrian protection into Dominican care on a charge of heresy, then we disguise our moves and meaning."

He smiled at Thorseby, hardly able to contain his excitement. I hove you! he thought. I have you, fair Prince Hal!

"You have done very well, Prior General," he said, deciding he rather liked Thorseby, after all. "Very well. Your favor is granted, with the proviso that during your inquisition of Neville you find evidence to also implicate his master, Hal Bolingbroke. So ... how may I best assist you?"

 

 

BOLINGBROKE AND his household attended evening mass in St. Paul's rather than remaining within the anonymity of the Savoy's chapel. Neville had cautioned him against it, but Bolingbroke believed there would be no trouble. How could Richard move against him when he was cushioned by the adoration of the Londoners?

As they left the cathedral, its bells pealing joyously across London, Bolingbroke— Mary on his arm—turned and saluted the yelling and cheering people on the steps and crowding the courtyard.

"Is this not a merry day?" Bolingbroke said, turning to grin at Neville and Margaret. "You can be sure that Richard shall hear about it," Neville said. "Ah," said Bolingbroke, "today I care not about... sweet Jesu; Tom, watch your back!" The crowds around them had suddenly parted as if a giant hand had swept them aside. Where there had been a solid cheering mass behind Neville and Margaret, now there were the pikes and reaching hands of at least forty heavily armed soldiers.

Neville's first thought was to push Margaret out of harm's way, his second a stunned realization that these men had come, not for Bolingbroke, but for him. Chaos exploded about him.

At the same time that Neville had pushed Margaret, Mary had stepped forward and wrenched Margaret into her arms, pulling her well back from the men-at-arms.

Margaret struggled, crying out with fear for her husband, but Mary held her tight. Bolingbroke had not worn a sword this day, and now he cursed his stupidity. He stepped forward, grabbing at the pike of the first soldier who approached Neville.

Robert Courtenay and Roger Salisbury, who had both been waiting with the horses at the foot of the cathedral steps for their masters, let go the reins and sprang up the steps, drawing the swords that they, at the least, had had enough forethought to wear. The crowd roared, thinking only that Bolingbroke was being attacked. The men-at-arms pressed forward, four of them grabbing Neville, the others surrounding him.

"I command you set him free," Bolingbroke shouted, losing his grip on the pike he held and stumbling back.

Courtenay and Salisbury had now reached his side, but stood impotently, unsure what to do.

The sergeant of the men-at-arms stepped forward and bowed deferentially at Bolingbroke.

"My lord," he said, "I do you a favor." Then he raised his face and shouted at the crowd. "I come for Neville, not Bolingbroke! Neville is a traitor to his master, and puts him in great danger."

era The crowd retreated slightly, muttering and murmuring in great swells. What cared they about this Neville?

"He lies!" shouted Bolingbroke, incredulous and angry in equal amounts.

"What charge?" Neville said. "What charge? And who brings it?"

"A charge of heresy," said the sergeant, no longer deferential. "Brought by Prior General Thorseby." The sergeant paused, assessing the situation and the mood of the onlookers, and decided that some inventiveness was called for. "As well as a charge of plotting the downfall of my Lord of Bolingbroke—"

"He lies!" cried Bolingbroke again, his voice now charged with desperation.

The crowd did not listen to him. Neville? A traitor to their fair Prince Hal? Their murmuring increased, their mood darkened.

"Tom!" Margaret screamed, still struggling with Mary.

"You are to be taken to Blackfriars," the sergeant said, somewhat relieved now that the mood of the crowd had been deflected away from himself and his men. "There to face an inquisitory panel led by—"

"Thorseby," Neville snarled, and met Bolingbroke's eyes across the forest of pikes that surrounded him. Thorseby, but partnered by Richard's ill-will "Aye," said the sergeant.

"Are we to have a burning?" asked a hopeful voice from somewhere several faces back in the crowd.

"No!" Margaret screamed.

Neville still held Bolingbroke's eyes. "Take care of her," he said, "for me."

And then the pikemen wrenched him away, half dragging him down the steps of St. Paul's.

Margaret finally managed to jerk herself free of Mary and grabbed at Bolingbroke.

He did not look at her, his eyes still on Neville being hauled further and further away.

"Do something!" Margaret said to him.

"What?" Bolingbroke snapped, finally looking at her. "Send Robert and Roger to their deaths at the end of forty pikes?"

"Hal, save him!" Margaret whispered.

"For Christ's sake, woman!" Bolingbroke snarled back at her. "Be grateful that he is going to Blackfriars where Thorseby will, at the least, observe the formality of an inquisitory panel and then, perhaps, a trial, rather than the dungeons of the Tower, or Ludgate, where he would be dead before nightfall at the swords of Richard's lackies!"

He looked at Courtenay, standing helpless several paces away, his sword dangling impotently, and still staring to where Neville had disappeared.

"Robert?" Bolingbroke said. "Come, aid your mistress here. We must return to the Savoy as soon as we may.

"Margaret," he spoke quietly in her ear as Courtenay approached. "Be sure that I will do all that I can to free your husband."

Margaret made a helpless gesture, and began to weep.

Bolingbroke turned away from her and stared at the dark smudge of Blackfriars.

Damn Richard to all the fires of hell!

 

 

"YOU CAN do nothing," Lancaster said.

"I cannot leave him there!"

"Hal," Lancaster said as gently, yet as firmly, as he could. "You have no choice."

Bolingbroke looked at his father, then walked away a few paces, staring sightlessly at a book of hours that his father had open on a lectern.

"Richard wants nothing more than that you should make some grand gesture to free Neville," Lancaster continued.

"I cannot leave him—"

"He will be in relatively little danger, Hal—"

"Unless Thorseby suddenly finds him guilty of a flammable heresy."

Lancaster looked at his son carefully. "Should he find him so guilty, Hal?"

Bolingbroke turned about. "No ... no. Of course not."

"Thorseby will eventually allow him free. I will have the matter raised in Parliament."

Bolingbroke flashed his father a cynical look, and Lancaster's temper frayed.

"I will raise the matter in Parliament, Hal, and I will speak to the sergeant of the clerks of the King's Bench. I will appeal wherever I can ... but right now, appeal is all we can do. You must resign yourself to the fact that for the moment Tom is under the stewardship of the Dominican Prior General with the backing of the king. There is nothing you can do against such power, Hal. Nothing."

He paused. "Not without giving Richard good reason to throw you in the Tower for flouting the law. Hal, do you understand me? Do you?"

Bolingbroke stared at his father, then jerked his head in assent.

JOAN STOOD before Charles, and he slid his eyes this way and that, not wanting to hear again what she had been telling him these past ten days.

Raise an English siege of Orleans?

"We are not strong enough," he said, for what seemed to Joan like the hundred and fiftieth time.

"We will have God and His archangels to fight for us," Joan said, as she always said when he claimed they would not be strong enough.

Charles pouted, trying to hide his fear. He did not want to fight, he did not want to be king (it was just like his grandfather to go and die while enjoying the English king's hospitality), he simply wanted to be left in peace so that he might enjoy those things in life he most appreciated. For one thing, music; the soothing ballads of the ancient troubadours and the stirring phrases of more modern historians.

He most certainly did not want to be God's chosen. Not anymore. It had been exciting when Joan had first appeared... but now ... now it all seemed so dangerous.

Charles envied Philip of Navarre. Philip was a man born to be a king—gallant, handsome, courageous. He was amusing, spending hours allowing Charles to win at chess, and regaling him with the stories of his womanly conquests. And Philip was compliant. When Philip had united with Charles to retake Paris two years previously he had readily agreed to Charles' suggestion that Philip be the one to lead their forces through the gates and into the thick of the fight while Charles guarded the rear from his tent.

Charles liked Philip.

But Charles had a horrible suspicion that Joan was going to want Charles to participate in the French action against whoever awaited at Orleans, an action that was going to involve a battle with hardened English warriors rather than disorganized urban craftsmen.

Joan's eyes narrowed as she watched the emotions play over Charles' face. By now she knew well enough what he was thinking: he did not want to fight.

Joan thought that contemptible. Charles needed to be strong. France needed a powerful sovereign, not some weak-kneed fellow who wept when he nicked his chin on the edge of his morning razor.

"You lead the army," Charles said. "You're the saint, not I."

Joan almost lost her temper. "I will carry the archangels' standard at the head of the army, yes, but France also needs to know that you are there. They need to know that they have a king who will lead them from this cursed English occupation."

Charles dropped his eyes. "I cannot."

"But—"

"I will not." His voice raised to an almost-shout. "After all, I am king, am I not? I can do whatever I like, can I not? I can say and—"

"If you are not there then Philip of Navarre will walk out of Orleans as king—not you!" Joan yelled. "God has chosen you, and you may not deny God!"

Charles lapsed into a sulky silence.

Joan took a deep breath, hating to make the concession, but knowing she had to.

"Ride with us," she said in a tone rich with cynicism, "but perhaps it might be best—to protect your gallant self, of course—if, for the battle, you remained in some nearby secure stronghold. Then, once all is won, you may ride forth to receive the cheers of the good folk of Orleans."

Charles brightened, suddenly having a vision of himself riding into Orleans in the guise of savior.

"Are you sure I won't have to fight?" he said.

Joan sighed. "I am sure no one could ever make you fight," she said.

Charles' bowels suddenly clenched. "When do we have to leave?" This time Joan's sigh was even deeper. "Not yet," she said. "The archangels will tell me when it is best."

And she knew why the archangels waited: it would be best when the English were at their most dispirited.

It was not only the French Joan hoped to impress with her victory at Orleans. She would also be sending a powerful message to the English and their dog-cursed Demon-King.

THREE DAYS AFTER Joan had managed to persuade Charles to at least ride with the French force to a point somewhere vaguely close to Orleans, Hotspur was moving his own force into position around the city.

Like Charles, Hotspur was riven with doubts, but ones that Charles would be barely able to comprehend. Hotspur wanted to fight, he wanted to feel the sweat of battle about him and to hear the cries of his enemies at the point of his sword... but his master, Richard, appeared intent on making it impossible for him to succeed.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

Hotspur had grabbed at Richard's offer that he lead an English expedition to aid Count Pedro of Catalonia. It had the potential to not only expand England's influence in the area (where both Richard and the Percys believed that Lancaster held too much influence via his influence in Castile) but to expand Hotspur's reputation twenty-fold. Hitherto, Hotspur's renown had been built entirely on his efforts against the cursed Scots, and while that was good, he would prefer to win wider renown with a continental victory or two.

He'd set off for Bordeaux in high spirits, but continual delays, caused by Richard's parsimonious attitude toward actually releasing the funds needed to pay for the expedition, had meant he'd not even left Bordeaux before Pedro had solved his problems on his own.

Hotspur had been left simmering in port while, he had no doubt, the Lancastrian faction at home had been laughing over the rims of their wine cups.

When Richard had sent word of Limoges, Hotspur had led his force out of Bordeaux within two days, needing to vent his anger and embarrassment in whatever way he could.

Limoges had suffered terribly, and somewhere within him Hotspur knew he had treated the city and its inhabitants too harshly.

But he'd needed something to hit out at, he had needed something to counter the Lancastrian laughter, and so he had murdered the entire population of the small city. Murdered them because they had announced their loyalty to their home prince, and to this saintly virgin, the Maid of France.

Sometimes, at night, Hotspur woke screaming from nightmares that were filled with smoke and the stench of screaming, roasting flesh, nightmares where he did not know if he was standing watching Limoges burn, or standing trapped in hell.

Perhaps there was no difference.

And so, again at Richard's prompting, Hotspur had marched north to take the city of Orleans. Here, perhaps, he could ensure that his name be wrapped in glory rather than the horror of Limoges.

Hotspur knew he could take Orleans ... if not for Richard. The force Hotspur had assembled in Bordeaux and then marched north was relatively small, some eight or nine thousand men—it had, after all, only been meant to aid an insignificant Spanish count. Hotspur did not have the numbers or the equipment or the supplies necessary to establish a successful siege around a city such as Orleans.

Now, this Easter Tuesday, Hotspur sat his horse some three miles distance from the city, his commanders about him, staring silently toward the city.

Orleans sat on the northern bank of the Loire river. The city had four land gates, and one river gate reached by a substantial (and substantially defended) bridge that stretched from the southern bank of the Loire.

The commander of the French garrison at Orleans had ensured that all the gates were well bolted hours before the first sight of the approaching English.

Well, at that Hotspur was not surprised. On their own the gates did not perturb him overmuch—starving men tended to unbolt gates more quickly than their well-fed counterparts. The trick was to ensure that Orleans starved before any French reinforcements arrived. (Who? The panicky and cowardly Charles? This saintly maid that Hotspur had heard so much about?) Hotspur knew that the city would be well-stocked, perhaps enough to keep hunger at bay for two or three months, but his task would be to ensure that no fresh supplies reached the good folk of the city.

And that Hotspur was not sure he could do.

The walls of Orleans were so well defended by high towers and thousands of men that, for the protection of his own soldiers, Hotspur needed to keep his siege fortifications back half a mile, probably more. That meant he would have to stretch his men in a huge circle about the city... and he did not have the men to do that without leaving them dangerously vulnerable.

The upshot of all this meant he would not be able to encircle the city completely. Instead, Hotspur would have to place his men in well-defended garrisons at key placements along the roads (all bloody twelve of them!) approaching the city in order to stop food supplies or reinforcements getting through.

And then there was the river ...

And he did not have the men to do it!

"Damn it!" Hotspur muttered, and his commanders glanced at him, not envying him his position.

"Is there no word from Richard?" Hotspur asked Lord Thomas Scales, one of his immediate subordinates. In the weeks since Richard had ordered Hotspur to march on Orleans, Hotspur had lost count of the messages he'd sent back to his king requesting— and, finally, pleading—for more men, more supplies, more equipment... more aid, damn it!

"Nothing, my lord," Scales said.

"Prick," Hotspur muttered, knowing that Scales was aware he didn't refer to him. Somewhere deep inside, Hotspur knew that Orleans was going to turn into a complete disaster.

And he had a feeling all his men knew it, too.

IT WAS A HOT DAY, the last gasp of spring before the sweat and labor of summer fell upon the land. Wat Tyler paused on the small rise, catching his breath and wiping the perspiration from his face and neck with the sleeve of his undershirt.

Flying grubs buzzed about him, and the sun beat down mercilessly. He waved the insects away, and looked at the countryside stretched before him.

Fields and pastures shimmered in the heat, broken up by the twistings of narrow, silvery streams, the broader expanses of fish ponds, straggling stands of woodland, dusty boundary lanes and even dustier roads. Most of the fields were dotted with figures, and carts laden with hay and bound sheaves of gram wound slowly and tortuously along three of the laneways.

Here, in the heart of the garden of England, the home county of Kent, men and women labored from sunrise to sundown to battle the pests and weeds that threatened their ripening crops.

Tyler squinted into the sun, shading his eyes with a hand. Ah, there. The small hamlet of Barming and, several miles further into the distance, the hazy smudge that marked the town of Maidstone.

But Maidstone could wait. For the moment, Barming was Tyler's destination. He had slipped quietly and secretively through here some time past, laying the seeds of revolution.

For long months now, he and Jack Trueman had individually been through scores of other villages in Kent and in the county of Essex which lay just north above the Thames. Others of their kind had been through many more communities. Murmuring, questioning, feeding doubts and stoking fears.

Tyler glanced behind him, even though he knew he would see nothing.

Somewhere behind him, several days' journey distant, were two tax collectors, wending their way through Kent to raise Richard's bastard poll tax.

They would never get past Harming.

Tyler grunted, half smiling at the thought, and turned back to the road before him. He started down the rise, but his thoughts were now removed from the landscape before him.

Instead, they were with Hal Bolingbroke.

For most of their adult lives Bolingbroke and Tyler, as so many others, had been working toward the same goal: the goal that the angels were prepared to move heaven to prevent. But even though they wanted to achieve the same end, Tyler and Bolingbroke were divided as to how best to achieve this goal. Tyler, like Etienne Marcel, advocated outright revolt using the misery of the ordinary people; Bolingbroke preferred the twisting dim alleys of subtlety and falsehood. While Bolingbroke did agree with Tyler that the commonality needed to be freed from the social, economic and clerical shackles that bound them, he scorned Tyler's idea of inciting open violence and rebellion, thinking it would create more problems than it would solve. Instead, Bolingbroke spun delicate webs of intrigue and deception among the powerful nobility; better a slow redirection within the top echelons of society than a catastrophic revolution from below.

Tyler did not think he could wait any longer for Bolingbroke's subtle plans to ripen into full fruition. He had given Bolingbroke long enough. Besides, Tyler was sure that Bolingbroke had missed his chance, that he should have made his move when Edward III and the Black Prince died. Sweet Jesu, even Catherine had turned to another man.

Bolingbroke was running out of time and opportunity, and Tyler knew it. Richard was moving from strength to strength. Despised he might be, but Richard still enjoyed the support of Parliament and many of the nobles, even if that support had been gained through fear. Those who sympathized with Bolingbroke were, as yet, reluctant to move ... and every day they left it, the move would become harder, more foolhardy, less likely to succeed.

Well, if Bolingbroke's plans lay in tatters, then he, Tyler, must needs take charge.

Rebellion. The masses rising for their rights as human beings: freedom to make the choices that would ensure their family's well-being, freedom to choose their path in life, freedom to shape, not only their own destiny, but the destiny of their country ... the right to call themselves free men and women ... the right to throw off the fetters that millennia of lords and priests had draped about them.

Freedom from the crippling chains of the angels.

Sudden tears pricked Tyler's eyes. Freedom for the common man would be so hard to achieve, and Tyler was perfectly aware that the next few weeks could end in his death, as Etienne Marcel's struggle had ended in his death.

Then he sighed, and pushed away his maudlin thoughts. Better to think of John Ball who had spent the past nine months rotting in Canterbury's prison.

Time, soon, to set him and his glorious talents free. Tyler smiled grimly, and stepped out down the road.

 

 

JACK STRAW straightened, dropping his weeding hook and rubbing his aching back as he did so. A man was walking down the track between the two fields, waving as he saw Jack rise and look.

Jack frowned, squinting. Who was it? Not any of the men from his village ... nor any from the neighboring estates.

He was just about to curse, thinking the stranger a wandering friar or priest looking for free board and food, when the stranger lifted the hat from his head and waved it vigorously about.

Jack's suspicious expression vanished, and he laughed. "Wat!" he called, and strode to greet the man.

 

 

THAT NIGHT they sat around the fire in the house of one of Barming's most respected husbandmen, John Hales. There were some twelve men present besides Tyler, Straw and Hales: eight of these men were from Barming, one was a craftsman from Maidstone, one a villager from Allington just to the north of Barming, and the last two were men from the village of East Farley which lay a mile or so to the south.

The talk was quiet-toned, but rich-hued with violence and resentment.

These were men who had grown to adulthood raised on the stories of their fathers and grandfathers, stories which told of the ancient, and anciently despised, feudal bonds and dues; bridles and manacles designed to keep men from bettering their lot in life. But these men, raised in the labor shortage and subsequent opportunities created by the ravages of the pestilence, had grown to maturity knowing personal freedom lay within their grasp.

Yet every time their lords—whether of the nobility or Church—tried to reimpose the ancient bonds of serfdom, that tantalizing glimpse drifted farther and farther beyond their reach.

"Parliament wants nothing more than to grind us back into the hell of eternal serfdom," growled one man.

Just as the angels want to tighten the chains of leaven, thought Tyler.

"Aye. They have their townhouses and fat purses," said another, "but what do we have? A lifetime of backbreaking labor to wrap them in furs and silks."

"A lifetime of paying heavy taxes to keep them safe and warm more like," said Jack Straw. "A lifetime of taxes so heavy that we have no time nor chance to better ourselves."

"Yet are they not born the same way we are?" said Tyler softly, his eyes shifting from face to face as he fanned the fires of revolution. "Do they not eat and shit and fornicate in the same manner as we? What right do they have to call themselves better men than us? By what right do they hold us in servitude?"

There were growls of assent among the men.

"By the right of the damned Church," said one. "Every time we beg for a chance to improve our lot, fat clerics heave themselves into their pulpits and tell us that it is God's will that we work, God's will that we sleep with the grubs, God's fucking will that they lord it above us!"

"After all," mocked Hales, "shall that not get us a place in heaven?"

Someone laughed, and it was not a pleasant sound. "Nay," the man said, and spat. "Never! Do not the priests sadly inform us that we are such horrible sinners we shall spend eternity burning in hell?"

"Unless we plan ahead by paying them m heavy gold for an escape, of course," someone said.

"Are we not all useless fools," said Tyler, "for sitting about this fire mouthing empty words but doing nothing else?"

Silence.

"In several days' time two tax collectors will arrive in Barming," said Tyler. "My friends, all around England this night good men like yourselves are sitting about their fires cursing the affliction of the poll tax that Parliament has added to the already onerous burden of labor and dues we carry through life. All they need, all we need, is someone to make a stand."

Again, silence.

"Perhaps if we took our grievances to good King Richard," said Jack Straw. "Perhaps he does not understand the burden good Englishmen labor under. If he knew, perhaps he could set it to rights."

"Aye!" came a chorus of voices. "If only Richard knew!"

"Perhaps it is time we made a stand," Hales said.

"We will aid you," said one of the men from East Farley.

"And we!" said the man from Allington.

"The whole country will rise, my friends," said Tyler, "for this is a good and just cause.

"What day did you say those tax collectors would be arriving?" asked Hales.

"MY LORD?"

Neville whipped about from the narrow window he'd been staring through. Sweet Jesu, he'd been so wrapped in his thoughts he'd not even heard the door open.

"Robert!" Neville crossed the cold floor of the cell in three strides and embraced Courtenay in a great hug.

Eventually Neville stood back, although he kept his hands locked on Courtenay's shoulders. Neville grinned even as his eyes filled with tears. "My God, Robert," he said, "I had thought never to see you again, nor any other loved face."

Courtenay likewise had tears in his eyes. In past months he had come to love his previously dour master, and these previous two months had seen him become gaunt and haggard with his worry.

"Margaret?" Neville said, his grin fading. "Is she well?"

Courtenay nodded. "Aye, my lord, although she weeps for you daily." He tried to smile, but couldn't.

"And Rosalind? And the new child?" Neville said.

"Safe, my lord. Rosalind wanders the courtyard and stables looking for you—"

"Sweet Jesu, Robert! You do not let her wander among the horses?"

"No, no, my lord. Either Agnes or myself is with her at all times. But she frets for you, and seeks you in every shadowed place."

Neville let Courtenay's shoulders go and turned away, trying to surreptitiously wipe away his tears. "And the new child grows safe?" he said quietly.

"Aye. My lady says that she is well past her early months of sickening, but lies sleepless at night with the kicking of the child and with her worry for you. My lord, she sends you her deepest love, and wishes that she could come to you as I do."

Neville took a deep breath, the worst of his worries eased, and turned to face Courtenay again. "And how is it that my gaolers have let you through?"

"Either myself or Roger Salisbury have come to Blackfriars daily, my lord, demanding entrance and a few minutes spent with you. My Lord Bolingbroke, as Lancaster, has spent countless hours seeking aid and explanations as well. But, until today, to no avail. The Prior General," Courtenay's voice hardened, "had wrapped you in chains so tight that none could get through."

Thorseby and Richard, Neville thought, but, as Hal had said to Margaret, he also knew that his life was safer—for the moment—in Blackfriars than it might be somewhere else where Richard could move against him more freely.

"And today ... ?" Neville said.

"Today a friar came for me before dawn, saying that I was to bring fresh clothing and a razor." Courtenay indicated a bundle that he'd dropped at the door.

Neville nodded, also observing the shadow lingering outside the open door. Everything said within this chamber would be noted.

He tipped his head to the shadow, catching Courtenay's eye, and his squire gave a single nod. I will be careful.

"Well, for the fresh clothes and the razor I am more than grateful," Neville said, his hand rubbing his full beard ruefully. "The friars have thus far thought it best for me to wallow in my own uncleanliness."

As if on cue a lay servant of Blackfriars entered the cell carrying a steaming bucket of water and some cloths. He stood the bucket at the foot of the bed, dropped the cloths, and left.

He did not once look at Neville or Courtenay.

"Thorseby has given me plenty and more time to wallow in my own thoughts as well," Neville said, starting to strip away his filthy clothes.

"They have not questioned you yet, my lord?" Courtenay took Neville's clothes and folded them with a grimace of distaste.

"Nay, although this sudden desire to make me clean also makes me think that a questioning is not far distant. Thorseby has heretofore allowed himself the pleasure of making me wait." He bent and wrung out a cloth in the hot water, and scrubbed at his face. "Ah, Lord Jesus Christ, that is good!"

Courtenay took another cloth in hand, wet it and soaped it well, and washed down Neville's back and legs. "At least you have not succumbed to an infestation of lice, my lord."

"Hush, Robert. If Thorseby hears of my escape he shall send a pailful of them down!"

Courtenay laughed, and for a few minutes neither spoke as they washed away the grime of Neville's two months incarceration. Then Neville sat on a stool and allowed Courtenay to take the razor and cut his hair, and trim his beard back close to his cheeks and chin.

"Robert," he said quietly, catching Courtenay's eye and then looking to where the shadow still shifted beyond the door. "What news? I am as starved of news as I am of fresh air and my wife's love."

"My lord, where to start?"

"At home, Robert, then move outward."

"Aye, my lord. Well..." Courtenay paused as he clipped away carefully at Neville's chin, "my Lady Margaret tells me that my Lady of Hereford is with child."

"Mary? Ah, that is news that will gladden Hal's heart."

Courtenay shrugged. Bolingbroke had been smiles and cheer when Courtenay had heard him discuss Mary's pregnancy, but Courtenay had thought there was something artificial about Bolingbroke's cheerfulness. Ah well, who was he, a bachelor, to judge the words of a husband?

"Lancaster has been ill with a late-winter chill," Courtenay said, turning his mind from Bolingbroke, "and with missing his lady wife."

"{Catherine still lingers in the north?"

"Aye. Raby also has spent some five weeks in the north seeing to his affairs." Courtenay grinned. "He is back in London now ... and it is said that his wife Joan again grows big with child."

Neville laughed. "Poor Joan!" Then he sobered. "But Lancaster ..." "It is only a chill, my lord, and he recovers well." "Good. And Bolingbroke?"

"Missing you sorely, my lord, and has been beyond grief that he cannot save you." Courtenay hesitated, and Neville waited.

"Bolingbroke has spent hours haunting Richard's court," Courtenay finally continued, "begging and threatening whoever he is able to come to your aid." "He has not put himself in danger with Richard, surely." "He would have done so, my lord, save that Lancaster sent Raby to forcibly return Bolingbroke to the Savoy. My lord, be sure that if there was a way you might have been freed, then Bolingbroke would have found it."

Neville nodded, thinking of all that Courtenay was not saying. Bolingbroke would have ranted and raved, and only Lancaster's cautious hand would have kept him from storming Blackfriars to release Neville.

And Richard's ill-will would have stayed Bolingbroke's hand in every other way. Neville sighed. Bolingbroke would be frantic with both worry and frustration, knowing that if he so much as looked at Blackfriars when riding by it might give Richard the excuse he needed to accuse Bolingbroke of treason.

And I must be more than careful what I say when brought before Thorseby, Neville thought as he tilted his head to one side to allow Courtenay to chip away at his left jaw, for everything that comes from my mouth will be reported to Richard who will try and trap Bolingbroke through my words.

"There was a great celebration held on May Day," Courtenay continued, "when our blessed king rode in state through the streets."

Neville caught Courtenay's eye and grinned—"our blessed king" indeed! "I heard," Neville said, "although I could not see. This window overlooks nothing but a bare patch of the Thames."

"There has been news from France," Courtenay said. "Aye?"

"Hotspur has closed the pincers of his army about Orleans, and some say he will take it for Richard within the month." "What have the French done?"

"Little, my lord. There have been rumors that the maid Joan has been urging Charles to march south, but that the man has found a thousand different reasons to delay thus far." Neville grunted. God Himself would have trouble frightening Charles into action. "And there have been troubling reports from Essex and Kent, my lord." Neville's eyes jerked upward. "What reports?"

Courtenay's eyes flickered to the doorway, and Neville barely managed to keep his frustration under control. Damn these listening ears.

"London is abuzz with rumor," Courtenay said, finally wiping clean the razor and packing it away: he would have to show it to the guards on his way out to prove he hadn't left a potential weapon with Neville. "Rumors of what?"

"Of bands of angry men, talking strange words of freedom from servility." Neville waited as Courtenay searched for the right and careful combination of words.

"It is said," Courtenay said, handing Neville his clean underclothes, "that these men speak of marching on London to present their grievances to good King Richard."

Neville stared at his squire, understanding the words, but not knowing the deeper meaning that Courtenay wanted to convey.

His squire returned Neville's stare in full measure. "Many good folk are terrified," Courtenay said carefully, "of the inevitable chaos of looting and burning should the mob invade London. My lord Bolingbroke is very concerned about the traitors and the murderers that might be set free."

Neville nodded, slowly drawing on his underclothes while he thought. If this mob did come to London, then the opportunity would be there for every scoundrel to use the ensuing chaos to garner for himself what he would.

And Neville had no doubt that Blackfriars would be one of the first places attacked.

By the most friendly of scoundrels, of course.

He almost smiled, then thought of the greater implications and jerked to his feet. "Sweet Jesus, Robert! Get Margaret and Rosalind out of the city! If this is as bad as you suggest, then—"

"I will do my best, my lord, but your lady wife will probably refuse to leave without you."

Neville grabbed Courtenay by the shoulders. "Robert—"

"I will do my best, my lord!"

And with that Neville nodded, trying to put out of his mind a vision of Margaret and Rosalind being trampled under the pounding feet of an out-of-control mob, or burning to death as the rebels set fire to the city.

"Enlist the aid of Bolingbroke," Neville said. "If Bolingbroke can't get Margaret to leave, then no one can."

Now Courtenay nodded, and held out Neville's tunic. "Come, my lord, you cannot go to meet your accusers dressed only in your underpants."

Neville did not manage to raise even the smallest of smiles.

THE MOOD OF rural England was grim but still, barely, controllable.Tyler thought it like a dark lake with seething undercurrents—apparently calm, but likely to explode into uncontrollable fury at any moment.

He, as all of his, had been laying the seeds for this uprising for years, but Tyler had never thought the uprising might grow beyond his control... and that thought terrified him.

Since he'd arrived in Barming some nine days ago events had moved swiftly. From Barming, men and whispers had spread like twisting carp through the still waters of peasant England. The whispers, the call to action, had rippled out from other villages, too, for many of Tyler's cousins and kin had been waiting for the mind-thought from him, and were ready to agitate the waters.

The two tax collectors who arrived in Barming seven days ago had not left. Their corpses were even now feeding the fishes in their breeding ponds.

They were not the only two to die. Other tax collectors lay rotting in field and furrow across Essex, Surrey, Sussex and Suffolk.

Peasant men began to band together into their tens, then their scores, and then their hundreds. At first they milled about their home fields, then, as their numbers grew, moved more purposefully toward major towns and cities.

Where lay more tax collectors, and the men who directed them.

As men banded together both their sense of resentment and their sense of purpose grew stronger. The poll tax had been the final burden—the indignity that would set the dark waters rolling out of the lake in a great, destructive tidal wave—but it was not the only grievance. The commons of England realized that this might be their only chance to force their overlords to grant them the same rights and freedoms under law that the nobles and clerics enjoyed.

So, as these growing bands of pike- and stave-wielding men murmured and rumbled their ways down the lanes and roads of the home counties, they added other objectives to the initial intention to voice their grievance about the poll tax. They remembered the deeds and documents stored in courts and manor houses by which their overlords claimed the legal right to bond them to the soil. They remembered the weeks and months they had to spend working their lords' lands when they could more profitably have been working their own.

They remembered that the great clerics of England lived in luxury funded by the peasants' sweat and toil. They remembered the pennies they had to pay to the local priests every time they wanted their babies baptised, or their parents buried, and the pennies and taxes they had to pay to ensure their salvation.

And all these pennies went out of England and to the fat, corrupt cow of a Reman Church, the laughing stock of all honest men now that two (or was it three, or even five or six?) popes squabbled among themselves for the right to speak the words of God.

And the right to control the massive wealth the Church plundered from honest country men and women who merely wanted a better life in the next world to the one they endured here.

Well, perhaps it was time to ensure that this world was the better one, instead of listening to the seductive words of lords and priests who told them that it was God's will they suffer in this life so that they might have a greater chance at salvation in the next.

With these men of the land marched renegade priests and friars, who fed them ideas and visions of a future that inflamed their already raging resentment at the lords and clerics of England. Who needed this great hierarchy of priests when all you needed for salvation was an understanding of the Bible? It was no wonder that the Roman Church refused to allow the Holy Scriptures to be translated out of Latin and into the words of the common people.'The great Master Wycliffe surely spoke sense when he said that the corrupt Church existed in such a state of sin that it no longer had God's mandate to control so much wealth and land. And so much land. The Church of Rome owned fully a third of the land in England. Why did the Church need that if not to feed the corrupt and luxurious lifestyles of the higher clergy?

Perhaps the land and wealth of this foreign, uncaring and dissolute Church could be shared out among the people.

And so, as these groups marched and merged, their anger grew to unprecedented proportions. They had to make a stand—now!—or both the nobles and the higher clergy would grind them back into the dust of slavery forever.

No one stood in their way as they marched. England's army was in France, or in the north to keep the ever-cursed Scots in their misty hills and fens. Local militias were too small to cope with these murderous bands of peasants ... or too willing to join them.

All that the lords could do was send frantic messages to Westminster pleading for aid—and then run for their lives.

Some didn't make it.

 

 

THE ANGER and this willingness to fight for freedom filled Tyler's soul with joy, but at the same time he feared that the rising mass of commons might seethe out of control. This huge, murmuring beast—still split into groups spread over the southeast of England—had to be kept in check in order to be effective ... and Tyler had not thought it would be so difficult, nor that the beast would prove so savage.

Having murdered the two tax collectors, the men from Harming had picked up whatever might best serve them as weapons—pikes and staves, as also bows and quivers full of arrows and swords to supplement the knives that all men carried at their waist—and merged with men from the villages in their immediate vicinity: East and West Farley, Allington, Aylesforde, Ditton and East Mallyng.

Having collected in a field some two miles from Maidstone, the band—numbering some two hundred men—then marched on the town itself.

It "fell" with nary a struggle. Not only was Maidstone unwalled and largely undefended, the band was welcomed by the majority of the townsmen who had suffered under the burden of taxes and personal restrictions almost as much as their rural cousins.

Maidstone's small prison was attacked, the jailers murdered, and the prisoners set free.

The local court building was burned to the ground, together with all the manorial deeds and documents it held, and the throng shouted with delight as they watched almost five hundred years' worth of feudal records being destroyed.

Having dealt with the props which upheld their landlords' claim to lands and labor, the mob turned its attention to those who laid claim to their souls. The Maidstone priest having fled, the mob marched out of the town half a mile southeast to Milgate Abbey where they ravaged and burned deep into the night, murdering the few monks who were too old and lame to run for their lives.

It was here, finally, that Tyler managed to regain some semblance of control. "Do you want to waste your energies on burning down barns'}" Tyler screamed at the mob undulating before him in the torchlight.

"Barns?" called out one man. "This is filth that we destroy here.'" There were murmurs of agreement, but Tyler spoke before they could swell and surge into another wave of destruction.

"We have no time for this!" Tyler said. "Do you think we will be left in peace for months so that we might skip about to every abbey and every hermitage in the land? If we want success then we must move fast, before the lords can move against us!"

"He's right!" cried Jack Straw, coming to stand by Tyler's shoulder. "Lads, I know your anger, but we cannot run amok like goose-boys! We need a head to direct our body, so that we might best use its strength. Tyler speaks well, and he speaks with hardened years of soldiery behind him."

Murmurs again, but agreeing with what Straw said.

"We need a head and a mouth to speak what is in all our hearts," Straw said. "And I say that Tyler is our man!"

Men shouted, but Tyler's voice overrode them. "Lads! In short time the lords will rise from their shock and assemble against us—if we don't achieve our aims before then we will never do so!"

"Richard!" shouted a man. "Richard will aid us!"

"Aye!" cried several more. "He will surely aid us against our oppressors." Fools, thought Tyler, but knew that he needed to foster this illusion to mold the mob to his will.

"We need to make ourselves heard," Tyler said, then paused, his sharp eyes staring about the crowd. "And we will never be heard if we stay mired in the muddy fields of Kent."

"Where?" said a man.

"Canterbury—" Tyler began.

"Where resides the murderous archbishop!" screamed someone from far back in the crowd.

Tyler almost smiled. The genial and good-hearted Simon Sudbury could never be described as "murderous." But he needed the mob to go to Canterbury—there lay his second-in-command, rotting in jail—and the thought that they might get their hands on poor Sudbury in doing so was a good enough excuse to get them marching westward.

"Canterbury," Tyler said. "Then London."

The mob erupted again, now shouting Tyler's name, and Tyler relaxed a little.

 

 

LATE THE next night, Canterbury lay under the pall of the rebels, many of its buildings on fire, the archbishop's palace completely destroyed in the mob's rage that the archbishop himself was, apparently, in London.

For the moment, Tyler did not care that Sudbury had avoided the mob's anger. He had better things to do than think about the archbishop's lucky escape, and one of those things consisted of leading a band of some twenty-eight men into the prison that rose outside the walls of the town.

Here lay the one man who could—hopefully—consolidate Tyler's control over the maddened beast that roiled outside.

John Ball.

Tyler found him, eventually, brushing off his shabby robe in one of the lower cells. He was dirty—but then that was largely Ball's natural state anyway—and hungry, but otherwise seemed well, and Tyler embraced him with a brief, fierce hug.

"John!"

Ball grinned. "It has begun then?"

"Can you not hear them?"

"Oh, aye, that I can. Well... what now?"

"London," said Tyler, "and whatever fate awaits us there."

PRIOR GENERAL THORSEBY finally condescended to send for Neville three days after he'd allowed Courtenay permission to visit his lord.

Neville was not surprised Thorseby had made him wait—had not Prior Bertrand done the same to him at St. Angelo's?—and thus was not disconcerted by it. He knew that Thorseby had wanted to make him sweat, and he refused to pander to the Prior General's machinations.

Two friars came for him in the early afternoon. They did not speak, merely opening the door and indicating that Neville should follow them.

As they remained silent, so too did Neville, and he walked forward from his cell without a backward glance.

 

 

THE PRIOR General was waiting for him behind an oak table in a chamber in the main building complex of Blackfriars. The stone and brick chamber was lit only from narrow slit windows high in its northern and eastern walls, and its air was cold and merciless. Spring had not yet managed to penetrate into the depths of Blackfriars. Three other Dominicans sat with Thorseby: one Neville recognized as a master at the Oxford colleges, the other two he did not know.

Far more malevolent than the heavy presence of the Dominicans was the figure of Sir Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, who sat at Thorseby's right hand. Behind Tresilian were two lay clerks, pens poised to record whatever incriminating words issued forth from Neville's mouth.

"Thomas Neville," Thorseby said as soon as Neville halted before the table, "you have been brought here today—"

"By whose authority?" Neville asked, pleasantly enough.

Thorseby stared at him. "By the authority of the Holy Church—"

"And which pope was it that gave you—"

"—and by the authority of your sovereign, Richard, king of England and France."

"Ah, so I am to be one of Richard's victims." Neville knew he should not goad Thorseby so, and he knew that his interruptions worked only in the Prior General's favor, but he was so infuriated by Tresilian's presence, and by the knowledge that Richard would use him to get at Bolingbroke, that he could not help himself.

"You are here to save your body and your soul," said Tresilian quietly. He was a gray-haired, haggard-faced, spare man with, as Neville knew by reputation, all the mercy of a swinging axe and the warmth of a week-dead snowbound carcass.

"And will I be allowed to so save my body and soul?" Neville said as quietly, holding Tresilian's stare.

"You have been under scrutiny for well over a year," said Thorseby, somewhat ostentatiously shuffling a pile of documents which lay on the table before him. "Your behavior as a subject has been questionable, your behavior as a friar has been abominable, your behavior as a Christian even worse."

"I have served my God as truly as any man might," Neville said.

"You will not speak until you are offered the chance to do so!" Tresilian said.

Neville's face tightened, but he remained silent.

Thorseby stopped shuffling the papers about and looked steadily at Neville. "You doubtless can remember our last conversation, held in Lincoln during Lent of last year."

Neville inclined his head.

"You may answer!" Tresilian said.

"Yes," Neville said.

If Thorseby was irritated by Neville's refusal to grant him his honorific of "Prior General," or even "Father," then he gave no sign. "And do you remember my concerns regarding your behavior at that time?"

Neville's lips curved in a small smile. "You claimed that I had abandoned all my clerical vows and demeanor. As my most good lord, the Duke of Lancaster, summed up, I had been a Very bad boy.' "

Neville had finally managed to needle Thorseby. The Prior General's cheeks mottled, and he took a deep breath.

"But," Neville continued before Thorseby could speak, "I assume that the current charge of heresy relates to that which you accused me of last year—my claim to have been visited by the archangel Saint Michael."

To Neville's surprise, Thorseby smiled a little at that. "Ah, yes. Your angelic visitations. Well, Neville, I wish we could rest merely at archangels."

He paused, and Neville kept his face as impassive as he could.

Thorseby's expression suddenly turned into that of the vicious attacker. "Is it not true, Neville, that you have been consorting with demons?"

Neville stared in disbelief at Thorseby. "I—"

"You have been seen!" Thorseby yelled, now half standing. He picked up a sheaf of documents and then slammed them down on top of the table again. "I have sworn documents here to prove it. Neville, do you truly mean to deny that you consorted with a demon in the Brenner Pass? Would you so damn your own soul?"

Neville was so stunned he could not manage a single word. How had Thorseby managed to gain that information? Sweet Jesu, he had totally underestimated the power of Thorseby's maliciousness.

"These statements," Thorseby whispered, now leaning forward over the table, "together with those from others who saw you cavorting with imps outside the village of Asterladen—"

"Lies! Thorseby, I did not 'consort' with that demon—"

"So you admit the demon's presence, Neville?" Tresilian said very quietly to one side.

"—are enough to see you burn, Neville," Thorseby finished with no regard to what either Neville or Tresilian had said. "And you can be sure that I will push the sentence through. I should never have allowed you entry into the Dominican Order. I should have seen your evil ways from the outset in your murder of your paramour—"

"You cannot accuse me of Alice's murder, you black-hearted—"

Now Tresilian leaped to his feet. "Silence!" he roared, and both Thorseby and Neville fell quiet, staring at Tresilian.

"I have had enough talk of demons and angels," the Chief Justice said, "and I care not for the intricacies of heresy. I accuse you of treason, Neville—"

"What?"

"It is common knowledge," Tresilian said, sitting down, "that you had dealings with the rebel Etienne Marcel in Paris—"

"He kept me a prisoner, for God's sake, my lord! I was not a willing conspirator."

Thorseby retook his seat as well, noting to himself that Neville was prepared to honor Tresilian with a title if not Thorseby.

"Not a willing conspirator?" Tresilian said. "And yet surely you had dealings with him on your journey north from Florence to ... where was it... Carlsberg?"

Neville did not answer, wondering what else Tresilian knew.

"Not a willing conspirator?" Tresilian said yet again, "when you so clearly were his willing comrade?"

"I was not—"

"You did not, while you were with Etienne Marcel in Carlsberg, accept from him payment and a token—a valuable signet ring?"

Again Neville chose to keep silent.

"You know as well as I," Tresilian said, "that acceptance of both money and a valuable item, such as a ring, indicate acceptance of a contract. What was that contract, Neville? To bestir rebellion in England while Marcel tore France apart?"

"I have never agreed with Etienne Marcel," Neville said, "and I do not bestir rebellion here."

"Then why accept the money?" Thorseby put in. "Why take the ring? You do not deny these actions?"

"I did not think—"

"Then such lack of thought may well prove your death, Neville," Tresilian said. "Furthermore, I think it no coincidence that the stirrings of unrest are even now being felt across the English countryside."

For an instant, Neville held his breath in horror, thinking that Wat Tyler's connection to both the unrest and to Lancaster's household had become known. Then he took a breath and relaxed very slightly—Tresilian had used no names and he had spoken only in the broadest of generalities. The Chief Justice was merely trying to trap Neville into confessing knowledge of the rebellion, and into implicating members of Lancaster's household ... and he had almost succeeded.

"I put it to you, Neville," Tresilian went on, "that for at least two years you have been surreptitiously working for the destruction of the English throne—even now peasant rebels march on the city—and that your arch-conspirator in this has been Bolingbroke!" Tresilian was standing now, stabbing his finger at Neville as he shouted. "Do you deny that the rebels march to your plan, and that they mean to murder Richard and put Bolingbroke on the throne?"

"No. You mouth only lies." Neville suddenly realized they were going to kill him no matter what he said. The decision had been made. This was merely the playacting that would give them the excuse to sign the death warrant. Sweet Lord Christ! Neville thought of Margaret, and a desperate sadness swept over him. Then he thought of how the world would descend into bleakness and chaos if the demons were not defeated, of how all those he loved would be tormented and murdered, and a blackness so profound gripped Neville that he almost swayed on his feet.

"Do you deny that there are some who would depose Richard?"

Neville hesitated just an instant too long. "If Richard is a God-fearing man, then he has nothing to fear," he said, but even as he spoke he knew that he'd not only said the wrong thing, but said it far, far too late.

Tresilian lowered his arm, then spoke to the scribbling clerks. "Note well, sirs, that he did not deny the last question put to him."

He looked at Thorseby, then back at Neville. "You will be taken back to your cell and within the week moved to the dungeons in the Tower," said Tresilian in a flat voice. "There you shall be kept at his grace's pleasure until it is time for you to face a trial of your peers in the matter of treason."

"And heresy," Thorseby said.

"He'll die one way or the other," Tresilian said, "and a traitor's death is far, far worse than that meted out to a heretic."

Thorseby thought about arguing the matter, then nodded agreeably. A morning of being drawn and part-quartered, and then having your cock sliced off and forced down your throat—followed, after a lengthy interval, by your balls and bowels—was, in the end, a longer and far nastier way to slide down into hell than facing the flames.

"HE SAID WHAT!" said Richard, finally sitting straight in his chair.

Tresilian smirked from where he stood some two paces distant. "Thomas Neville virtually admitted, your grace, that he and Bolingbroke have been working in concert with traitors here and abroad in order to usurp you from your throne."

"I knew it!" Richard said, and sprang from the chair to pace back and forth. He had him.

"What do you mean, 'virtually admitted,' Tresilian?" de Vere said.

"Why question it?" Richard said, coming to a halt before de Vere. "We have all we need to—"

"Forgive me, your grace," de Vere said in an obsequious voice, "for perhaps I speak out of turn. But, surely, until we have hard evidence we do not have all we need. Bolingbroke is too great a noble, and way too popular, to attaint on charges of treason without ironclad cause."

Richard shot him a bleak look, then turned aside.

De Vere moved to stand before Tresilian, taking over the interview. "What do you mean, Virtually admitted'?" de Vere asked again. "Tell me fact, man, not wish, for your life depends on this."

Tresilian's face hardened in barely controlled anger. Dear Cod, how much longer must England's nobles submit to the dominion of this ambitious arse-poker? "My lord," he said, "when I put it to Neville that he did indeed conspire with Bolingbroke, he refused to deny it."

"There!" Richard said, swinging about and staring at de Vere. "You see?"

De Vere still held Tresilian's eyes. "Did he sign a confession? Name his co-conspirators?"

Tresilian turned aside his eyes, wondering why it was he'd stopped the interrogation when he had. If he'd pushed ...

De Vere's lip curled and he looked at Richard. "It is not enough," he said.

Richard's face flushed with frustration. Curse Robbie. This was perfect! "Why not?"

"Where is your sense, boy?" de Vere said, shocking Tresilian who could not believe that Richard allowed de Vere to speak thus to him. "Lancaster and Bolingbroke carry almost half of the barons of England with them! If you accuse Bolingbroke without sufficient evidence, then you will cause civil war!"

De Vere paused, visibly struggling to control his temper, then continued in a more temperate tone. "But then, you would not live long enough to witness it, sweet boy, for if the commons of London heard that you'd arrested their beloved 'fair Prince Hal' they would storm this palace and rip you to pieces."

Tresilian could see that Richard was torn between lashing out at de Vere for this public humiliation and capitulating entirely to what was an obvious truth.

Tresilian hoped that Richard would find the strength to put de Vere in his place. Come on, Richard/You are the king, not your pet, Robbie.

"But..." Richard eventually said, "but I want Hal... I want him stopped ..."

Tresilian suppressed a sigh.

"Shush," de Vere said, and stroked Richard's cheek gently. "We will have him eventually. Do not fret."

Richard leaned his tear-streaked cheek into de Vere's palm and Tresilian had to turn away, sickened at Richard's increasing dependence on this man. He suddenly understood why it was he'd halted Neville's interrogation so precipitously: even then, unconsciously, he must have known England would yet have need of a man of Bolingbroke's caliber.

He was just wondering how best to extricate himself from the repellent scene unfolding before his eyes—de Vere had just leaned down to kiss Richard full on the mouth—when the far door of the chamber opened and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, strode in.

Tresilian thought that, for an instant, just an instant, there was a flash of revulsion in Northumberland's eyes at the tableau before him, but then it vanished as he drew close.

He bowed perfunctorily at Richard, and sent an unreadable glance at de Vere, before speaking.

"Your grace, there is great trouble to hand."

Tresilian, who knew Northumberland well and respected him as he respected very few men, instantly realized that "great trouble" meant very real, extreme danger. His mind instantly began to run through the armed force Richard had about him at Westminster, and he frowned as he realized how small the number actually was.

Richard was completely unconcerned. "My lord, you are always mouthing about some great trouble or the other. I pray that this is indeed great trouble, for you have disturbed me considerably."

"There is never a need to wish disaster upon yourself, your grace," Tresilian said, if only to let Northumberland know that he had an ally in this corruptly tainted chamber.

"I cannot think—" Richard began but got no further.

"There is a rabble of at least one hundred thousand peasants converging on London as we waste our breath in speech," Northumberland said. "They will have the city surrounded by nightfall."

Richard's eyes widened and his face went ashen. He tried to speak, but couldn't, and his mouth dropped uselessly and foolishly open.

"What?" de Vere said. "Intelligence put the peasant uprising at only a manageable few hundred! What mean you, one hundred thousand?"

"Would you like me to name them one by one?" Northumberland said. "There are at least one hundred thousand. They come from Essex, and East Anglia and Kent, and from a score of other regions. They scream for a redress to their grievances, and they scream your name, your grace."

Richard whimpered.

"Sweet Jesu," Tresilian said. "We have almost no armed men in either Westminster or London, and the militias of the city are not enough to prevent—"

"Aye," Northumberland cut in. "We cannot repel them."

"You must!" Richard shouted. He had grabbed de Vere's arm for support. "You must protect me! I am your king!"

De Vere ignored Richard and looked at Tresilian and Northumberland, all animosity gone from his eyes. "The Tower," he said.

"Aye," Northumberland said. "It is the only relatively safe place. Your grace, you must come with us. Now!"

 

 

THE NEWS of the approaching rebels was spreading throughout London when Northumberland strode into Richard's chamber in Westminster. Even as Northumberland was organizing the king's removal to the Tower, the markets and streets of London were ablaze both with fact and with rumor.

The Londoners greeted the news with a great deal of ambivalence. On the one hand, the majority of the men and women who lived in the city sympathized with the plight of the peasants. Most had relatives in rural villages, or were rural emigres themselves. Almost without exception, the Londoners loathed the poll tax as much as the peasants did, and hated the Church even more than the peasants did. The prospect of winning even greater freedoms with this rebellion also raised more than a few voices in heated enthusiasm— now was their chance to seize some independence along with their country cousins!

On the other hand, few Londoners cheerfully embraced the prospect of being invaded by one hundred thousand fit, angry men armed with iron pikes, shovels and hoes. The rebel mass moving toward London was as likely to not out of control as it was to peacefully present its grievances to the king. More likely to riot, in fact.

And London burned so easily.

Most shopkeepers and craftsmen closed up their shops, bolting tight the shutters across windows and doors. Valuables were moved to safe hidey-holes, generally buried deep in the hidden spaces of cellars, cesspits and the secret walks of London's sewers. Fires were damped down, and ovens left to cool. Children were moved inside, and told firmly to stay there. Some mothers bustled themselves, their children and a picnic supper into the nearest stone church, there to seek sanctuary from both the rebels and any conflagration. Men moved in tight, murmuring groups to join the watches to which they were assigned—the aldermen of most wards ensured that the fire watch was the first to be organized.

Not a few men, mostly wealthy merchants, or nobles who had somewhere to go and the wealth to purchase transport, quietly slipped down to private wharves and shipped themselves and their families out of danger. Foolishly, others thought to wait out the unrest within their London townhouses.

Despite the fact that so many families stayed indoors, the streets remained fairly crowded. Most men, particularly the younger men and youths, sensed the oncoming tempest and preferred to wait out in the open—perhaps even hoping to ride the crest of the storm. After all, did they not have grievances? Their ranks were swelled with the dispossessed and the mischievous, who saw in the night ahead some chance to take for themselves what had been so long denied them.

By late afternoon people thronged the streets, and the working life of the city had ground to a halt. Although the crowds were relatively quiet, the atmosphere was charged with such a heavy expectation that it seemed ready to explode, even without the presence of a single rebel.

 

 

BOLINGBROKE WAS frantic, and it showed in every nuance of voice and body. "You must get away from the Savoy, away from London!"

Lancaster turned away from his son and walked slowly to the window that overlooked the Strand.

People seethed up and down its entire length.

"Even had I wished to," he said, turning back to look at his son, "I could not now escape past those below."

"The Thames—"

"Is as crowded now as the Strand," Lancaster said.

"Sweet Jesu," Bolingbroke said, trying one last time. "The mob will shout your name, father. They will take this approaching rabble as an excuse to commit whatever mischief they have dreamed about for years!"

"And my name—or the extinction of it—is at the top of this list?"

Bolingbroke's face worked, and he half raised a hand, but he knew it was no good. Lancaster was right, it was too late to move now. "We can get you to the Tower," he said.

Lancaster laughed. "You would shut me up with Richard? What better way to accomplish my murder, Hal?"

Bolingbroke looked distraught and Lancaster was instantly contrite. "Ah, lad, I am sorry. It is best this way. I would prefer to take my chances with the London mob any day. Besides, all this may blow over. By this time tomorrow, everyone may well be back in their homes and no harm done."

"Not with a hundred thousand marching on the city," Bolingbroke said. Not with Wat marching at their head. Damn him for what he had done!

"We have men here, Hal, and we are surrounded with good, solid walls." It was Raby, walking forward from the corner where he'd been watching the other two silently. "And unless Richard's advisers have completely lost their heads"—he faltered, nonplussed by his unconscious choice of such unfortunate words—"then they will have sent for aid from the Earl of Surrey, and others within a day or two's march from London. Men who can raise a force sufficient to bring London back to its senses."

"But until aid does arrive, London is so vulnerable," Lancaster whispered, looking out the window again. "So vulnerable ..."

He sighed, suddenly very tired and sad. "The world is turning upside down," he said, "and I confess to not liking the change. Who would have thought the commons could so rise, or demand such freedoms?"

"It is foolish," Bolingbroke said softly, "for they can never win. Change must be seduced, not forced."

Lancaster frowned at Bolingbroke, not understanding him. "Mary?" he said eventually. "And Margaret? What of them?"

Bolingbroke made a gesture of helplessness. "I tried to persuade them to leave when reports of the peasant uprising first came in. Mary refused, as did Margaret. She said that she would not leave Tom."

"Then we must do what we can for them," Lancaster said, and Raby murmured agreement. "Sweet Jesu, Hal," Lancaster continued, "I am so glad that Katherine still resides in the north—but, God, I wish I could see her one last time!"

Completely shocked, Bolingbroke stared at Lancaster. Until this moment he hadn't realized his father was utterly resigned to his death at the hands of the mob.

He glanced at Raby, and saw that he also was staring in horror at the duke.

 

 

LATER, WHEN he'd left Lancaster, Bolingbroke spoke quietly to Robert Courtenay in the stables of the Savoy. They passed quick, urgent words before Bolingbroke took a ring from his finger and gave it to Courtenay.

"Show that," he said. "They will let you past."

"Christ Savior, I hope so," Courtenay mumbled, looking at the ring with its distinctive Bolingbroke emblem of the head of a helmeted and visored knight.

"Remember the name," Bolingbroke said.

"Yes. Wat Tyler. I know him, my lord. You need not keep reminding me."

"Wat Tyler and his rebels are Tom's only hope, Robert."

"Aye, I know." Courtenay looked at Bolingbroke with sympathy. The man had done everything he could to get Neville freed over these past two months; if he had not succeeded, then it was not through a lack of effort.

Bolingbroke clapped his hand on Courtenay's shoulder. "Then go, man. Go!"

"Look after the Lady Margaret," Courtenay said.

"Yes. Go!"

Courtenay stared at Bolingbroke for one moment longer, then he turned and vaulted onto the stallion behind him and gathered up the reins.

In the blink of an eye he was gone into the night.

COURTENAY RODE as fast as he dared through the press of people in the streets; the curfew bells had rung hours ago, but few had heeded them. The mayor of London would have some explaining to do, thought Courtenay as he urged his stallion past the crowds milling on Fleet Bridge, for once all this is done, Richard will surely demand the reasons why Wadsworth hadn't done more the keep the Londoners under control He didn't envy William Wadsworth one bit.

His horse's hooves clattered and echoed as he passed under the great archway of Ludgate. Once he was through, Courtenay glanced to his right where Blackfriars rose m a series of dark mounds humped against the night sky. He wondered what Tom was doing, if he had heard any of the news that had swept through London in the past day, or if he was staring out his tiny window across the Thames to the fields of Southwark, wondering at the number of boats plying their way downriver and the groups of people that must even now be congregating on the south bank of the Thames.

Courtenay had heard—along with everyone else—that the peasant bands which had converged on London had consolidated into two huge gatherings. The first group of some forty thousand men, mostly from Essex, had descended on the city from the northeast and were camping in a restless mass in the fields of Mile End beyond Aldgate.

But Mile End was not where Courtenay was headed. He turned off the main streets where the crowds were thickest and rode south to Thames Street, which ran parallel with the river. From here he could find his way to the bridge and—assuming he could cross— to Southwark. From there it was a three mile ride east to where the sixty thousand-strong band of Kentish men had congregated: Blackheath.

And there, Courtenay hoped, he would be able to find Wat Tyler.

The crowds were thick and unruly even on Thames Street. Men and women milled the length of the street, carrying pikes, shovels or whatever other implements had come to hand. Most carried smoking torches, and their sputtering, leaping light shadowing across the high walls of the warehouses and shops gave the street a diabolical air, as if it was only waiting for that one, secret word before it exploded into murderous violence. Courtenay hoped those merchants who lived above their warehouses—mostly foreigners—had already made their escape.

On five or six occasions men reached out to grab at the bridle of Courtenay's horse. Each time, they let his horse go when he shouted out Hal Bolingbroke's name. Courtenay had taken the precaution of riding garbed in Bolingbroke's livery and that, combined with the Bolingbroke name, proved enough to grant him safe passage—he did not have to produce Bolingbroke's ring. The mob might murmur about the nobles in general, but Bolingbroke's name still possessed its magic.

Courtenay knew his life depended on it continuing to do so.

London Bridge was a massive construction: nineteen stone arches resting on massive gravel-filled piers spanned the Thames River and its mudflats. Five- and six-story tenement buildings, warehouses, churches and shops completely covered the bridge's surface, reducing passage across to a narrow tunnel that wound under and between the buildings and that even at noon had to be lit by torches. Courtenay could see now that lights and shouting people dangled from every window and foothold on the bridge and its supporting piers. It could have been a carnival scene had it not been for the dangerous undercurrents which roiled under the words of every man, woman and child.

A well-armed man stopped Courtenay at the entrance to the bridge, taking a firm hold on the bridle of Courtenay's horse. At first glance, Courtenay thought him merely a member of one of the city's watches, but, at second glance, realized he had an air of authority about him that spoke of greater things. Courtenay studied him more closely. The man was big, bulky with muscle, and wore a sword and several knives over his leather tunic. Underneath unruly gray-streaked hair his face was hard-angled and planed, his mouth narrow and uncompromising. The man's eyes slid over Bolingbroke's livery, then up to Courtenay's face.

"Why are you wearing Bolingbroke's badge?" said the watchman.

"I am come on Bolingbroke's business," Courtenay said, and waited for the man's hand to drop from his horse's bridle.

If anything, the hand clenched tighter, and, uneasy, Courtenay's stallion sidled a little.

"A name is an easy thing to bandy about," said the man, and a chill went down Courtenay's spine as he saw the flames from nearby torches reflected in the man's black eyes. "And your pretty tunic and the caparisons of your horse could as easily have been stolen. Tell me your name and your business, and be quick about the telling, for this is a bad night and I am in no mood for men I do not recognize."

"I am Sir Robert Courtenay, attached to Hal Bolingbroke's household."

The watchman stared unblinkingly at Courtenay, who now saw that some score of passersby, mostly well-armed men, had gathered about to listen to the exchange.

"Well, Courtenay, if that truly be your name, tell me what you do here, and why you turn your horse for the bridge?"

Courtenay hesitated, not knowing what he should tell the watchman. Was he in sympathy with the rebels, or their steadfast foe? Depending on what he said, Courtenay could either find himself killed or see Bolingbroke arrested for treason.

"I do not know what to tell you," he said quietly, "for my loyalties lie first with my Lord of Bolingbroke, and I should not want to say anything that would place his life in danger."

The watchman's eyes narrowed. "First prove to me that you are Bolingbroke's man," he said, "and then nothing you say to me, or to any about us," he gestured to the crowd of men, "will be used to harm Bolingbroke."

Courtenay reached inside the pocket of his tunic and withdrew Bolingbroke's ring, holding it out for the watchman's inspection.

The man leaned over the ring, as did several of the other armed men crowding about, then he leaned back.

"Either you are Bolingbroke's man," he said, "or you are his murderer. I prefer to believe the former, but should it be shown to me that you are the latter you will die the next time you set foot in London."

Courtenay's look of relief was enough to quell the watchman's final doubts, and the throng of men drew back a little, lowering their torches and swords.

"Where go you?" said the watchman.

"Blackheath," said Courtenay.

A murmuring arose from the crowd.

"And for what reason?" said the watchman.

"Because Bolingbroke loves the commons of England," said Courtenay quietly, his eyes steady on those of the watchman.

"He is in sympathy with the rebels?" the watchman said. Now the crowd was entirely silent, and that was more ominous to Courtenay than anything he'd heard in the past few minutes.

What should he say? He was the last person to whom Bolingbroke had shared his confidences in the past days and weeks, but Courtenay had observed enough of Bolingbroke to be certain that what he was about to say would be a true representation of the prince's thoughts.

"Bolingbroke does not agree with the methods of the rebels," Courtenay said, "nor the violence, but he is in sympathy with their needs and grievances."

"Bolingbroke is a good man," said a man within the crowd.

"Aye," said another. " 'Tis a shame that he is not the king and could listen to our cousins' grievances."

"He will do what he can," said Courtenay, "but the doing cannot be given about publicly. There are many devoted to Bolingbroke's downfall."

The watchman spat. "And doubtless the perverted de Vere is chief among them. Well, Sir Robert, you have my word, as the word of those gathered about—"

There was a chorus of "ayes" and a wave of nodding.

"—that nothing you say, nor your passing, shall be shared among Bolingbroke's enemies."

"Then I thank you," said Courtenay, "for I would not wish my actions or words to be the instrument of Bolingbroke's downfall. Will you give me your name, sir, so that Bolingbroke might know of your aid for his cause?"

The watchman hesitated, then nodded. "I am Dick Whittington, mercer, and alderman of Broad Street ward."

Courtenay raised his eyebrows. This Whittington was an important man in his own right. It was no wonder he had such an air of authority or that the crowd had deferred to his every word.

An important man ... and a Bolingbroke man.

Whittington suddenly realized he still held the bridle of Courtenay's horse, and he dropped it with a shame-faced grin. "I apologize for my questioning of you, Sir Robert."

Courtenay shrugged. "It is a night of uncertainties, Master Whittington."

Whittington sighed, suddenly looking tired. "Aye, it is that, and who knows what the morrow will bring? Sir Robert, London is holding its breath, not only because we fear what might happen if these rebels erupt beyond anyone's control, but also because we wait to see how our king will handle them... and himself. He is young, and impressionable—"

"And de Vere is making far too great an impression on our king!" said a man to the side amid a chorus of ribald remarks on the exact nature of Richard and de Vere's relationship.

"—and the next few days will be the making or breaking of him, methinks," Whittington finished. "This is a dire event to occur to a young king so early in his reign. What he does will color the tenure of his kingship."

Sweet Jesu! Courtenay thought. I wonder if Richard realizes that London, perhaps the entire commons of England, will judge km—and his right to hold the throne—on how he copes with this rebellion?

Whittington was watching Courtenay closely, and understood what he was thinking. "If Richard does not do well, and does not handle these rebels with sympathy," the alderman said softly, "then there are many—a very, very many—who will believe he has no right to sit upon the throne."

"If it were Bolingbroke holding the sceptre," said a man, "then I doubt he would be cowering in the Tower!"

"Nay," said Courtenay, "he would be on this horse instead of me, riding to parley with those who hold genuine grievances.

"Good men," he continued, looking about. "That Bolingbroke is not on this horse speaks of the danger he is in. He has many enemies who would taint him with the corrupt brush of treason... men who have laid false charges against Lord Thomas Neville that they might remove his support from Bolingbroke."

"I've heard of this Neville," said Whittington. "And you say he is not a traitor to Bolingbroke?"

"Nay," said Courtenay, "he is only the means by which traitors mean to touch Bolingbroke."

He would have said more save that there was a sudden rumble of movement a block further along Thames Street.

"We have no time!" Whittington said. "Quick, Courtenay, ride your horse onto the bridge. I will see that they lower the drawbridge for you."

 

 

SOUTHWARK WAS a great deal quieter than London itself.The road that led from the bridge passed several tightly shuttered and barred inns, shops and homes, as well as the deserted palace of the Bishop of Winchester. The bishop had no doubt gathered his skirts and made good his escape many hours ago. A few people wandered the dark road, but they faded into the shadows as Courtenay galloped his stallion past.

The peace and stillness of Southwark lasted only the few minutes it took Courtenay to ride a half-mile along the eastern road toward Blackheath. Groups of men started to congregate in the fields, thickening until it seemed to Courtenay that the entire countryside was seething with people. He was stopped almost as soon as he had ridden past the first few groups, but was allowed passage (together with an escort to see him through) as soon as he produced Bolingbroke's ring.

The crowd became almost impassable as they neared the small village of Blackheath: only the horses of Courtenay and his escort enabled them to push through.

Courtenay thought his escort would take him to one of the village houses, perhaps to a barn or one of the small warehouses bordering the river, but his escort indicated a small hill just beyond the village.

Courtenay squinted as they neared, trying to make out what was happening. There was a crowd about the hill—so immense that Courtenay could not even comprehend its numbers—but the crest of the hill itself was clear. Several figures stood there, and Courtenay looked inquiringly to his escort.

"Tyler," one of the men said, and with that Courtenay had to be content.

A good quarter of a mile from the hill Courtenay dismounted to shoulder his way through on foot, while his escort stayed behind with the horses. He thought he'd have trouble in the passage, but to his surprise he was met after only a few paces by a man who introduced himself as Jack Straw.

"Tyler said you'd be corning," Straw said.

"How did he know?"

Straw shrugged. "Tyler knows many things that are dark to the rest of us," he said, then turned back the way he'd come, leaving Courtenay to follow him as best he might.

 

 

COURTENAY SUDDENLY realized how cold it was as they broke free of the crowd and walked to the space at the top of the hill. He was breathing heavily and sweating slightly—the hill was steeper than it looked from a distance—but even so he wrapped his cloak tighter about him.

Wat Tyler turned from the man he was speaking to, and stopped still, staring as Courtenay approached. He nodded, half to Courtenay as greeting, half to himself as acknowledgment of another marker reached. "Well met, Robert," Wat Tyler said.

Courtenay nodded his own greeting, remembering the uncomfortable meal shared at Halstow Hall the day Tyler had arrived with John Wycliffe and two Lollard priests.

He suddenly realized that there was a waiting silence, and that the man whom Tyler had been speaking with now stood at Tyler's shoulder, staring at him belligerently. Courtenay blinked, recognizing John Ball.

"Bolingbroke asked me to come to you," Courtenay said, looking back to Tyler. "He has a request."

"What?" Tyler said. "That I go home?"

"Nay." Courtenay stared at Tyler's face, wondering what was in the man that had made him lead the rebel army to almost certain ruin. "It concerns my master, Thomas Neville."

"Aye?"

"Neville is being held in Blackfriars—"

Tyler laughed, a sound of genuine amusement. "What? Did Thorseby manage to catch Tom at last?"

Courtenay fought to stop his jaw from clenching. "—and Thorseby is working in concert with the Chief Justice and Richard to not only hang Neville, but to hang Boling-broke through Neville."

"And so Bolingbroke wants Tom's life saved in order to save his own?"

"Nay. He told me to tell you that Neville must not be allowed to die for his own sake."

"Then Bolingbroke shouldn't have allowed Tom to be taken in the first instance!"

"Wat, please, listen to what I say! You are Neville's only hope. If you enter London—"

"If? You think there's a possibility we might just turn about and go home to our plowshares as soon as dawn lights the sky?"

"When you enter London, Bolingbroke asks that you take advantage of your numbers," Courtenay glanced at the crowd beneath them, "to free Neville."

Wat slowly shook his head. "I can't believe that Bolingbroke thinks I will jump to his every wish."

"Bolingbroke told me to tell you," said Courtenay, "that it is better that Neville be die battlefield than the Maid of France."

Wat stared at him, his thoughts in turmoil. It was patently obvious that Courtenay had no idea what the message meant, but Wat knew Bolingbroke's meaning only too well.

If Neville died, then the angels would probably move their battlefield to Joan of Arc, and it was very, very unlikely that Joan would choose any way other than that of the angels.

"He further told me to tell you," Courtenay continued softly, "that you do this for love of Neville, if not for love of Bolingbroke."

Tyler abruptly turned away then, after a moment, looked back to Courtenay, who was stunned to see tears in Wat's eyes.

"I will do this for love of Bolingbroke" Wat said. "Not for Neville."

"Neville has changed," Courtenay said, relieved that Wat had agreed to help, but needing to speak on Neville's behalf.

"Changed? How so?"

"He has become a gentler man."

Wat laughed harshly. "Gentler? The word does not marry well with 'Neville.'Tell me, Courtenay, how does he treat his wife, Margaret?"

"With love and respect. When I saw Neville last Tuesday—the first time any of his household or family had seen him in the two months of his imprisonment—his first words were for Margaret, and when I told him of the approach of this," Courtenay waved his hand across the masses below, "his first thoughts were for her."

Wat shrugged. "Whatever, I care little for Neville." His eyes shot to Courtenay's. "But I do care for his wife, as also for Bolingbroke, whatever chasms lie between us."

"Then I thank you."

Wat started to say something else, when John Ball, still waiting behind him, made an impatient sound and stepped forward.

"Wat," he said, "we must begin."

Wat nodded. "Aye. Courtenay, do you remember this man?"

Courtenay nodded, regarding Ball with some measure of disrespect, for he was ill-clothed and unmannerly in his appearance. Still, that was hardly unusual behavior for a Lollard.

Wat grinned at Courtenay's appraisal. "Poor looks or not, what John will say tonight shall set the world afire."

Jack Straw, who had hitherto been standing a few paces down the hill to give Tyler and Courtenay some privacy, now indicated that Courtenay should stand with him.

As Courtenay moved to join Straw, Wat suddenly leaned close and whispered in his ear, "Stay close after Ball has finished, for there is something I need to give you."

Then Tyler moved away, and stood on the grass a few feet away from Ball.

 

 

THE RAGGED, wild priest held up his arms and the crowd, who had been murmuring and shifting, quieted.

"Ah, good men," John Ball cried, and Courtenay knew that the man's clear voice would carry over most of this crowd.

"Good men! Things have not gone well in England for generations, and they will not go well until the wealth of this wondrous realm is shared among all its people!"

The crowd roared, and Ball had to spend long minutes waving them back into silence.

"You are held in thrall by those who call themselves noble," Ball eventually continued, "but by what right do they so hold you in bondage? What have they done, to be called 'great lords'? Why do they deserve their place over us? And how is it that they say they have the right to hold us in servitude?"

Courtenay glanced about him. Everyone was staring at Ball, and in their eyes glowed a strange light... the light of freedom, Courtenay realized.

"Do we not all come from the same mother and father?" said John Ball. "Are not we all children of Adam and Eve? So how is it these 'lords,' " Ball spat out the word with the utmost contempt, "say that they are better men than us? They are clad in velvet and silk trimmed with squirrel-fur, and we are clad in poor cloth. They have wines, and spices, and good white bread, and we have rye bread, and remnants, and straw, and we drink water. They have good homes and fine manors, and we have pain and toil, and till the fields in the rain and wind, and it is from us and our labor that must come the wherewithal to maintain their estate. We are called serfs and beaten if we do not, at once, do their service."

Ball halted, breathing deeply, allowing the silence to deepen before he spoke again.

"When Adam delved and Eve span," he whispered, and that whisper carried deep into the heart and soul of every man present, "who then was the gentleman?"

There was a silence, and then ...

"No one!" screamed a voice from far back in the assembly. "No one was the gentleman!"

"Nay," said John Ball, and Courtenay was as stunned to see tears in the renegade priest's eyes as he had been amazed to see them earlier in Tyler's. "No one was the gentleman then, as no one now should be any more the 'gentleman' above his neighbor. No one should own more than his neighbor, and no one should call his neighbor his servant.

"And no one now should ever look at you and call you or your sons bondsmen and serfs!"

My God, thought Courtenay. There'll be nothing but death awaiting them if they march up to Richard and say that.

And then his heart felt as if it had stopped, for he remembered his conversation with Whittington and realized the further implications.

If Richard trod these men into the mud whence they had struggled, then he would in turn be dashed down.

 

 

MANY HOURS later, when the crowd had dispersed to campfires and a hurried meal, Tyler sought out Courtenay.

"You must leave us," he said, "and return to Bolingbroke."

"No, I—"

"Wait. Hear me out. I will do what I can for Neville, but I need you to go back to Bolingbroke."

Courtenay hesitated, then nodded. "You said you had something to give me." "Aye." Tyler reached into a pocket and withdrew a key. "Take this. Give it to Bolingbroke and no other. Bolingbroke should have had the key a long time ago." He grinned wryly. "His subtle plans will be nothing without it." Courtenay did not ask what the key was for. He pocketed it, hesitated, then spoke.

"You will die if you lead that mob into London speaking words of peasants made lords and lords made peasants."

"I know," Tyler said, "but only death can remake the world. Isn't that what Christ's death taught us?"

IT WAS THE innocuous aroma of fresh baking bread that pushed the rebels' destructive fervor to breaking point. As a faint rose light stained the skies over Stepney Marsh, London's bakers began sliding thousands of fresh-baked loaves of bread from their ovens, sending the mouth-watering scent over the waking city.

And beyond.

The two massive bands of rebels, the Essex men a mile to the east of Aldgate and the Kentish men three miles southeast of the bridge, stirred and murmured and then, with no spoken direction, began to rumble toward the city.

Although their higher purpose was to parley and persuade the king that their grievances were genuine and their wish for more personal freedoms fair and equitable, the majority of the one hundred thousand which surged toward the city also nursed massive and long-standing resentments that needed to be assuaged first. London harbored many of the fat, corrupt oppressors who had made their lives, and those of their parents and grandparents, such a misery. The rebels were not going to miss this opportunity to settle some of their grievances.

The rebels rapidly descended into a rabble.

The Essex men reached London first, and found Aldgate, as also the small gate next to the Tower, laid open. The peasants surged through, shouting incitements to the Londoners to join in their cause.

Far above, Richard watched from the safety of the bolted keep of the Tower. He was pale and wretched with a combination of fear and anger.

The Kentish men were not far behind their Essex comrades. Wat Tyler, John Ball, John Hales and Jack Straw had managed to force themselves to the front of the mob as it surged into Southwark. The passage across the bridge was narrow, and behind the leaders tens of thousands of men milled through the streets of Southwark waiting their turn to set foot on the bridge.

While waiting, they contented themselves with burning down the Bishop of Winchester's palace and murdering the steward whom they found cowering in the buttery.

Jostled and pushed at the front of the pack surging across the bridge, Wat Tyler was tired, sad and angry in equal amounts. He knew the rabble behind him would ravage out of control once they'd gained entry to London ... and he knew he needed to let them do it. One day of rioting and their hatred for the despised nobles and fat clerics would have burned back to manageable embers: they would be more amenable to words again.

But what would they manage to do in that single day of rioting?

What would be destroyed? Who murdered?

Amid this mass hatred, would they remember their love for Bolingbroke, or would they see only the rings on his fingers and the sword at his side and think him one of the tyrants committed to their eternal enslavement?

Jesus Christ, what if they murdered Bolingbroke?

Over the past days Tyler had spread the word that many among the nobles would work for them, listen to them, and Bolingbroke was chief among the names he'd mentioned. Then, men had nodded, agreeing.

But who could tell what they would or would not remember in the heat and blood of their rioting?

Dick Whittington stood by the lowered drawbridge a third of the way across the bridge. He spoke brief words of welcome (what else could he say?) but had no chance to say more as the rabble enveloped him and swept him forward.

He fought his way through to Tyler, managing to grab at his arm and shout in his ear.

"I do not like this mood, Tyler!"

Tyler nodded, and managed a half shrug. He and Whittington had been friends and conspirators against the angels for decades but, like Bolingbroke, Whittington believed more in the power of subtlety and gradual change than the fire of revolution.

"Where is Richard?" Tyler shouted.

"In the Tower."

Tyler grunted. Where else? "What militia will we meet?"

"Almost none. Christ, Wat! We shall be trampled in this stampede!"

"No militia?"

"Wadsworth fumbled and dithered, and by the time he thought he should do something it was too late. But I have heard that Richard has sent pleas for aid to the Earl of Surrey and Sir Robert Knolles"—both nobles commanded large private militias within a day of London—"as others."

"How long?" Wat said as they finally crossed the bridge and headed north along Bridge Street.

"You have one day, no more than two."

"That I even have that I should thank the Lord Jesus," Tyler said. He grabbed Whit-tington's arm and pulled him into the lee of an alley, shouting to Straw and Hales as he did so to lead the mob further into London and then to split up and storm the major prisons.

Neither they, nor the mob, needed any urging.

"Dick," Tyler said softly, gasping as he tried to catch his breath, "you should not be seen with me. My name is death now, and you should know it."

Whittington said nothing, but he reached out and gripped Tyler's shoulder with one hand.

"Where is Bolingbroke?" Tyler said.

"In the Savoy."

Tyler winced. "Jesu!"

"I have left men there—they will deflect the mob's anger."

"Margaret is there too!"

"What? Christ, Wat! Why?"

Tyler shrugged. "She probably refused to leave."

Whittington dropped his hand from Tyler's shoulder and shifted from foot to foot, his face worried. "We must get her to safety."

"Aye, but I've heard that there is only one way she will agree—if her husband is with her."

"Tom," Whittington said. "He is in Blackfriars."

"I know. Listen, can you do your best for the Savoy for the moment? I'll direct a portion of these men toward Blackfriars—"

"The Essex men raged down that way not minutes before you approached the bridge, Wat."

Wat's entire face froze, then he cursed, loudly and foully.

He stopped, looked at Whittington, and gave a nod of leave-taking. "Fare thee well, Dick," he said, and then he was gone, lost amid the raging of the streets.

 

 

ALTHOUGH MANY Londoners had been terrified about what might happen when the peasants overran the city, their fears were quickly set aside. The rebels had very specific targets in mind, and none of them included the homes and shops of their city cousins.

The first objectives were the city jails, specifically the Newgate, Fleet and Ludgate jails. The rebels had little work to do in freeing the prisoners, for in most cases the jailers had prudently unlocked the cells as they heard the noise of the approaching riot.

Next, the peasants attacked the Temple complex in the eastern section of the city. Once the home of the Knights Templar, the Temple and its precinct now housed the barristers and lawyers of England.

The lawyers were not so sensible as the jailers had been. They tried first to bar the doors—they were too late—and then to protect the stacks and shelves of legal records.

In most instances, they burned with their precious records—documents that for centuries had enshrined the bondage of the commons in twisting, malevolent legal clauses that no peasant had hitherto been able to dispute.

Both lawyers and documents burned very nicely.

Having disposed of as many records as they could, the various arms of the mob then attacked many of the warehouses along the wharves, burning and looting, and murdering every foreigner and every Jew they could find. Then it was the time of the Church.

 

 

NEVILLE HAD not slept all night. He'd been able to see little from his cell save distant lights flickering somewhere beyond the south bank of the Thames, but he had heard the footsteps and voices in the streets, their excitement and fear, and he'd listened to the guard outside his locked door pace back and forth through the night until he'd slipped away—perhaps to save his family, perhaps to save himself—just before dawn.

At daybreak, as the familiar and comforting smell of the fresh-baked bread had wafted over the city, Neville had seen the gray tide surging toward London Bridge, and for the next hour had listened to the roars and screams in the streets outside Blackfriars.

The footsteps in the corridor outside his cell had briefly increased, and had then vanished completely, and Neville realized that the friars within his immediate vicinity had fled—whether to protect Blackfriars or to protect themselves he did not know.

For a while, perhaps a score of minutes, perhaps more, it became very quiet. Even the noise on the street all but ceased.

That worried Neville more than anything else. He paced back and forth in his cell, cursing his inability to act.

Was Margaret safe? Sweet Jesu, she and Rosalind must be terrified! Was Courtenay with her? Balingbroke?

"Damn it!" Neville muttered over and over as he paced. "Damn it! Damn it!"

He tried the door, setting his shoulder to it and pushing with all his might, but it was of solid construction and did not budge.

He took the stool and battered at the door, but the stool splintered and crumpled into useless fragments of wood while the door remained intact.

Then he pounded at the door with his fists, screaming for someone to come to his aid.

But no one replied.

He stepped back, staring at the door, his shoulders heaving with the effort he'd put into his pounding and screaming.

"Curse you," he whispered, and he did not truly know to whom or at what he cursed.

Then, just as he drew breath to renew his shouting, he heard a great crash on the floor above him. Neville's eyes jerked up. The timber ceiling of his cell was still trembling with the force of whatever had been pushed over.

Then his eyes moved back to the door: men, many men, were pounding along the corridor outside. There were shouts and curses, screams and pleas, and Neville took a step backward and armed himself with one of the shattered legs of the stool.

Something banged violently into the door, and then the sounds of a man pleading— screaming—for mercy. There were some grunts, and again the man was pounded against the door.

Neville had now backed up to the rear wall of his cell, his eyes riveted on the door.

The man pinned to the door shrieked, a thin animal sound of pure terror, and Neville heard the unmistakable sound of a knife being plunged again and again into flesh.

Every time it plunged through its victim's body it scraped against the door.

Neville's face hardened into the expressionless mask of the battle-hardened warrior. His eyes became flinty, his mouth thinned, and his hand hefted the jagged-edged leg of the stool.

He was not afraid, only angry at his helplessness.

Blood was now seeping under the door ... and still the man shrieked, if more breathlessly than previously.

Some part of Neville's mind registered that the man had been gut-stuck only: he was going to die, but he would be some time in the doing.

There were more footsteps, then voices—calmer than previously.

A jangling of keys, the sound of the dying, shrieking man being dragged to one side, and then the turning of a lock.

The door slowly swung open, and Neville raised his piece of wood.

And then lowered it, shocked.

Wat Tyler stood there, several men behind him. Tyler was marked with soot, and he had a shallow cut across his forehead.

His blue eyes burned brightly in a face tight with what Neville thought was fanaticism.

"Sweet Jesu, Wat," Neville said in an almost whisper. "What do you here?"

"Saving you," said Tyler, and then turned to take something from one of the men behind him—a peasant, Neville saw.

"Put this on," Tyler said, and he handed Neville a roughly woven peasant's cloak. "If you wander the streets wrapped in those fine clothes I cannot guarantee your life."

Slowly, Neville reached out and took the cloak.

His eyes slid past Tyler to the Dominican friar slumped against the far wall of the corridor, his shrieks now reduced to a horrid wheezing. The man's hands were clutched about his belly—uselessly, for blood was pouring out—and Neville could see the ropes of bowel that bulged between the man's fingers.

Tyler stepped forward and grabbed Neville by the arm, distracting him from the dying Dominican's agony.

"The Savoy," Tyler said.

"Margaret!" Neville said.

 

 

IN A distant part of the Blackfriars complex, a man dressed in a peasant's tunic and cloak slipped quietly from a side door and, slowly and carefully, made his way to the outskirts of London and the road north.

Two miles along the road, and at the top of a small hillock, Prior General Thorseby paused to look back on London.

Smoke rose in columns from the city, and even from this distance the glow of the fires showed clearly over the city walls.

"For the moment you might be safe, Neville," Thorseby whispered, "and think yourself escaped from justice ... but there is no escape from the justice of God!"

And with that he turned and strode northward toward safer lodgings.

"WHAT'S HAPPENING?" Neville asked Tyler as they ran through the corridors of Blackfriars. Men—both rural peasants and Londoners—seethed through the buildings of the friary; Neville counted at least eight bodies of friars before they ran into the courtyard of the complex, and ten or twelve more lying blood-drenched outside. Smoke was wafting through the air, and as Neville glanced over his shoulder at the main huddle of buildings within Blackfriars he could see that many of them were ablaze.

"Judgment Day come early for these carrion," Tyler said. They were now jogging along the lane that led north to Fleet Street.

"Tyler?" Neville said, almost growling. "What is happening?"

"Revolution, rebellion, freedom struggling out of the grave where your precious Church and fellow nobles have had it pinned for too many centuries," Tyler replied. "Call it what you will, for I no longer care."

"This is your fault!"

Tyler halted and whipped about to face Neville. "This is not my fault. It is the fault of all those who thought the good men and women of England should have been so ground into the mud. My 'fault' has only been to speak the words that have raised men from their servitude in order to fight for their freedom."

"God help you," Neville whispered.

Tyler gave a bitter laugh. "God will never help such as me. Now, come, I want none of your prating about rights and wrongs while the Savoy burns about your wife's ears!"

"Jesu! The Savoy is burning?" Neville pushed past Tyler and ran with all his strength toward Fleet Street, Tyler only a step behind him.

The streets were crowded with city-folk and peasants alike, and once Neville and Tyler turned westward along Fleet Street they were reduced to pushing and shoving and cursing in order to make their way through. Smoke and ash from scores of fires—all warehouses, palaces or monasteries—had settled in a gray, choking cloud over the city, and Neville had to pull the hood of his cloak close about his face so he could breathe. Even so, his breath was more a choking and sobbing than anything else.

Every few steps Tyler gave him an impatient shove in his back, and Neville realized that Tyler was as desperate to get to the Savoy as he was himself.

They should have been able to cover the distance along Fleet Street, through Ludgate, and then southwest along the Strand to the Savoy in ten minutes at the longest at a run... but they could not run, not in this city choking with rioters and smoke and fire and fear.

"We should have taken the river!" Neville shouted as they battled their way across the Fleet River bridge. Before them, on their left, many of the buildings within the Temple complex were burning fiercely.

Tyler shrugged, and pushed Neville forward yet again.

The sight and smell of the destruction left Neville dry-mouthed with fear for Margaret. The mob was venting its anger on anything and anyone who they thought had hurt them... and if there was one noble the commons hated more than any other it was Lancaster, who they mistakenly believed had always conspired against Edward III and the Black Prince.

The Savoy, and any in it, were now about to pay the price for the malicious and ill-founded rumors about Lancaster.

"Why can't you stop them?" Neville screamed as they finally gained the Strand.

"Not even God Himself could have stopped this lot," Tyler said, finally managing to move abreast of Neville.

At that instant, both men caught sight of the Savoy, still some hundred paces away.

It was wreathed in thick, black smoke, and tongues of blue and orange flames flickered out of its windows.

"See the bastard Lancaster burn!" screamed a gap-toothed and filthy man to Neville's right, and without even thinking, Neville smashed his fist into the man's face.

He gave a grunt of surprise and crashed to the ground where he vanished almost in-stantly among the feet of the mob about him.

No one took any notice of Neville's actions. This was a day to indulge in violence, after all.

Tyler wasted no time in words or recriminations. He grabbed Neville and pulled him down a laneway leading to a narrow path along the riverbank.

The press of bodies, if not of smoke and ash, cleared almost immediately, and both men broke into a run, dashing down the laneway then turning to their right to run along the path beside the Thames.

 

 

MARY HAD spent the previous night with Margaret and Agnes while Bolingbroke watched, with Lancaster's men, from the parapets. While all three women had gone to bed concerned about the unrest, none of them had ever imagined that violence would have enveloped them so quickly or with such murderous intent. They'd been drifting out of a fitful sleep in the hour after dawn when there had sounded the sudden noise of voices and feet in the street. The women had barely managed to rise and wrap themselves in shawls and cloaks before the mob had invaded the Savoy.

Terrified, they huddled behind the hangings of the great bed, certain that once the mob had done with their murdering and looting they would return to rape them.

Shouts and clattering footsteps sounded in some distant part of the palace before, horrifyingly, drawing closer to the chamber where the women cowered. There was a scuffle outside the door and then the sound of fighting—a cacophony of clashing steel, shouts, curses and the grunts of the combatants. It went on for what seemed like hours, but which was probably only minutes, before there came a nightmarish scream of splintering wood as, Margaret supposed, the great wooden dresser containing pewter plate and stoneware standing against the outer wall of their chamber crashed to the floor. A man shrieked, his cry dying to a horrifying gargle, which was abruptly cut off, and then the noise of the fighting faded as both intruders and defenders moved further into the palace.

Unsure if Lancaster and his men had managed to repel the mob, or had been repelled themselves, Margaret, Mary and Agnes nevertheless breathed a little easier. At least they were safe for the moment from the savage anger of the invaders.

But as they relaxed away from their fright, a more terrifying ordeal began. Somewhere in the palace a fire had taken hold, and now smoke trickled under the doorway in an ever-increasing thick blanket. Once under the door, the smoke rose, as if under the guidance of some evil enchantment, toward the low ceiling of the chamber. In its own quiet, silent way, the smoke was far more terrifying—and far more lethal—than the previous clash of steel beyond the chamber. No cloth placed against the crack between door and floor was able to prevent its insidious entrance—smoke filtered through every joint and minute crack between the door and its frame, and within minutes the three women and the child were coughing and hacking in the fumes.

There was no escape. More scared of choking to death than of encountering the mob, Margaret and Agnes tried to open the door so they could escape. But it was outward opening, and now would not budge—the ruins of the dresser had clearly fallen directly across the doorway.

They beat against the door with their fists, screaming (amid their choking) for aid ... but the only reassurance that reached them was the growing sound of crackling flames, and a spreading heat across the wooden panels of the door. They retreated to attack the window, but the glass was heavy and thick and the leading old and rigid, and in any case, the windows had never been designed to be opened.

There was nowhere for the smoke to go, but to roil in ever-crazier eddies about the chamber, and there was no escape for the four trapped within the chamber.

Eventually Margaret and Agnes, coughing and choking, rejoined Mary and Rosalind, huddling in the farthest corner of their chamber in a futile effort to escape the effects of the smoke. Margaret touched Mary's cheek in ineffectual reassurance, and took Rosalind into her arms, hugging the sobbing child tight against her breast.

The sound of the spreading, roaring fire and of the cracking timbers in the massive roof above them deepened their dread with every moment that passed.

How soon before the roof collapsed?

No longer did they fear that the mob might return to rape them—at this point the women would have welcomed the return of anyone. All they cared about were their lives, and the lives of their children—Rosalind, and the unborn children that both Margaret and Mary were carrying. All they wanted to do was to escape, to live, but they did not know how they might manage it.

Suddenly there was a massive explosion, and all three of the women cried out. The great window in the chamber had shattered in the heat, discharging shards of glass throughout the room.

Both Agnes and Margaret felt splinters slice into their scalps, but the wounds were flesh-hurt only, and they brushed the glass away with shaking hands, drawing in great gulps of the fresh air that rushed through the broken panes.

"Can we escape—?" Agnes began, coughing a little.

"No," Margaret said. "There is nothing but a drop of thirty feet or more outside that window."

"Then thank Jesu that at least we have air to breathe," Mary said in a low voice. "Aye," Margaret said, "but that will be of no comfort to us if we cannot escape the flames."

She was about to say more, but at that moment the smoke thickened as it rushed toward the opening in the window, and all the woman found themselves choking anew. Margaret clutched the material of her shawl to her nose and mouth in a futile effort to breathe a little easier, then dropped the material as she realized that Rosalind was coughing badly.

She leaned over her daughter, thinking to lift her up toward the window, when there was a sudden screech beyond the door as someone dragged heavy wood aside. Margaret froze, half sitting, half standing, and Rosalind cried out. Margaret hushed her, then strained her stinging, watering eyes in the direction of the door.

She heard a harsh scraping as someone pushed the door open, and then the sound of a footfall, and of a man coughing as smoke poured through the doorway and into the chamber before rushing toward the shattered window. "My lady? Margaret?"

Margaret opened her mouth to speak, but she was so relieved to hear Courtenay's familiar, trusted voice in the midst of this nightmare that she found herself crying instead, unable to form words in her throat and mouth. "My lady?"

It was Rosalind who raised her voice—a desperate, gagging cry that brought Courte-nay at a half run across the chamber.

He had a damp linen wrapped about his face, and Margaret sank to her knees in flight, even though she had recognized his voice.

"My lady," Courtenay rasped, and grabbed at Margaret's arm. "You must get out of here, now!"

He dragged Margaret to her feet, then reached down for Mary. Agnes was already standing and dragging at Mary by the thin material of her nightgown.

Courtenay cursed, not caring that Mary whimpered at the sound, and aided by Agnes, pushed the other two toward the door. Both Margaret and Mary came to their senses almost immediately, clashing through the dim outline of the door which suddenly loomed before them and into the corridor that led to the main stairwell of the palace and the courtyard.

"Bolingbroke?" Margaret said as she felt Courtenay take her arm and pull her along the corridor.

"I don't know," Courtenay said. "There's been righting... I broke away... ran to find you ..."

Mary whimpered, and Agnes wrapped an arm about the woman's shoulders, urging her forward.

"Outside, away from the fire," she said, "and then we shall see to your husband." The corridor was empty save for the smoke, and they reached the stairwell relatively easily and fumbled their way down, leaning on the walls for guidance as the smoke thickened.

The walls were almost too hot to touch.

Margaret began to cry. Now that they were close to escape she began to fear that they would not reach it after all; that the smoke would choke them, or the flames would finally consume them. Rosalind was writhing so violently in her arms that she did not think she would be able to hold on to her for much longer. The child within her was wriggling desperately as well, twisting her off-balance as she fought her way down the stairs.

Between the two, and her own terror, Margaret suddenly believed that she was going to die, that everything was in vain, that the entire world was dying, and that the angels even now were reaching out to judge her.

Her foot missed a step, slipped, and suddenly Margaret was falling. She had no time nor breath to scream, merely to register the thought that she was, finally, going to die, and take Rosalind with her into that dying, when a dark shadow rose before her, and she fell, not to dash herself against the flagstones, but into the arms of a man crying out her name. It was so unexpected that she could not for the moment comprehend what had happened. She thought the man spoke with Tom's voice, but how could that be, for was he not stilled locked up in Thorseby's black house of God?

"Margaret," the man said, and Margaret realized that, indeed, it was Tom, and she collapsed against him, crying and sobbing his name, and thinking that she would never, never again as long as she lived love him as much as she did that moment.

He swept her and their daughter into his arms, and she was safe ... safe ... safe and being carried out of this burning hell into the courtyard where the smoke still swirled, but not with the viciousness that it had inside.

"Margaret?" a voice said, and she thought it was Wat's voice, and she blinked, and saw his face hovering over Tom's shoulder.

"Wat?" she whispered, disorientated by his presence.

Then another man spoke to her, and she blinked again, and turned her head, and there was Hal, his face ravaged with pain and anger.

And beyond Hal, several paces away, flat on the cobbles of the courtyard, lay a man all burned and seared down one side of his body, and Margaret blinked again, and thought that this man's devastated face looked strangely like Lancaster's.