(daybreak 2nd June 1380)
— I —
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.