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.
PART FOUR
The Hurting Tyme
And in Kyng Richardes regne the commons arose up in diverse places of the realm and did them much harme the which they called the hurtyng tyme.
—Chronicles of England, 1475
Oh miserable men, hateful both to land and sea, unworthy even to live, you ask to be put on an equality with your lords!… Serfs you were and serfs you are; you shall remain in bondage, not such as you have hitherto been subject to, but incomparably viler.
—Richard II’s response to the rebels’ demands
CHAPTER I
The Monday before Corpus Christi
In the second year of the reign of Richard II
(21st May 1380)
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.