(late afternoon Tuesday 2nd November 1378)
— II —
THOMAS HAD MANAGED two hours sleep, and was still scratchy-eyed and irritable as he wandered aimlessly through the narrow, dark streets of Chauvigny. He couldn’t find Bol-ingbroke anywhere, and Raby was, apparently, still closeted with the Black Prince.
There was nothing to do save wander about and look for some amusement.
In itself, that wander had more than enough to interest Thomas. He’d spent too many years as a nobleman not to feel at home in a military environment. Most of the men he paused by were eager enough to chat, and to explain the slight changes in the armor or weapons they carried since Thomas had last ridden to battle.
But there was something wrong, and Thomas couldn’t quite work out what it was.
It seemed almost as if an invisible miasma had settled over the fortress. A tension.
Or was it just him?
“Ah,” Thomas mumbled, walking toward a group of men-at-arms standing about a fire in a small courtyard outside their quarters. “I should have had more sleep.”
No… it wasn’t that, and Thomas knew it. He stopped suddenly, as he realized what it was. He felt needed, as if someone, somewhere, was calling his name, holding out a desperate hand toward him …
“Tom! Tom!”
Thomas blinked, and focused on the figure waving to him from the circle of men.
Sweet Jesu! It was Wat Tyler!
Well, that was good. Thomas knew he needed to talk more with the man to see if he could discover his true nature. Demon, demon-controlled, or just plain misguided? A part of Thomas wanted it to be the latter. He and Wat had been close when Thomas was a youth, but time, physical separation and Thomas’ holy vows had put a considerable distance between them—nothing demonstrated that more than their meeting in Rome.
Thomas wondered that he hadn’t thought about seeking Wat out before this. Wat Tyler had long been Lancaster’s man, and it made sense that he was here. Wherever there was a battle, and Lancaster, there would be Wat.
Thomas walked slowly over toward the group of men, wondering about Wat’s connection with Lancaster. Should the Black Prince and Lancaster know of the imp they sheltered within their midst? But if he told the princes that… then he must perforce tell them all.
Thomas slowed even further as another thought occurred to him: Wat had said that Lancaster agreed with the heretical words of Wycliffe.
Who was the imp, Wat… or Lancaster?
“It is good to see you back within the company of good men,” Wat said as Thomas finally joined him. Wat gestured about the circle. Most were free commoners, trained in the arts of sword and lance, who rode in units to back up the knights in battle.
“These are all home county men,” Wat said, smiling gently at his companions,
“men of my own heart.”
Thomas glanced at Wat sharply. Men of his own heart? Men of heretical inclination?
He looked back at the circle of watchful eyes—most of the men had some form of chain mail or plate armor on, and all had a weapon ready to hand—and found one among them who was not a soldier at arms.
Thomas nodded to the man, standing just behind the shoulders of two of the
men-at-arms.
“Good priest,” Thomas said, “I am glad to see you here, ministering to the souls of these soldiers. From what parish do you hail?”
The priest, his robes slightly disheveled, stepped forward so he could address Thomas directly.
“I come from London, friar. And my parish is the betterment of all good Englishmen.”
Thomas frowned. What kind of answer was that? And the priest had no tonsure!
His dark brown hair was grown long and curly over his scalp—this man had not shaved a tonsure for many months—and his black eyes burned with a fanatical light that Thomas immediately distrusted.
“My name is John Ball,” the priest said, smiling a little at Thomas’ obvious distaste, “and I am a true priest.”
“What do you mean?”
“He means,” Wat said, “that he ministers for the good of our souls, not for the betterment of the Church. Do you understand my meaning, Tom?”
“There is no difference,” Thomas said, and would have said more, save that the entire circle of men had burst into laughter.
“The Church strives for nothing but its own betterment, friar!” said one man. “So long as we pay our tithes, and mortuary taxes, and coins on feast days and for every service the local priest provides us, then our souls can go to hell for all the Church cares.”
“That’s sacrilege!” Thomas said. “The Church is—”
“The Church is a fat, lumbering cow,” said another. “It cares only for itself, and not for us. I give that” he spat into the center of the circle, “for your Roman Church.”
“John,” said yet another, moving closer to the priest and placing a hand on his shoulder, “cares for our welfare before that of the Church. He is our friend, and our helpmeet. He does not speak to us of hell, only of the beauties of salvation.”
“The Church brings you salvation, no thing nor no one else!” Thomas said. How far had this rot spread?
“All a man or a woman needs for salvation,” John Ball said quietly, “is an understanding of God’s word as written in the Scriptures. We don’t need a bevy of fat, bejeweled clerics to interpret it for us!”
“This is Wycliffe’s doing!” Thomas said.
“Nay, Tom,” Wat said quietly. “This is the workings of the mind of any free man.
Wycliffe only speaks what many men already believe.”
Thomas, his face flushed, was about to say more when a shout halted him.
Everyone looked. A frantic soldier ran toward the group.
“Brother Thomas! Brother Thomas!”
He reached them, and gripped Thomas’ sleeve. “The Duchess Eleanor lies a-dying.
She has asked for you … to take her last confession …”
Thomas stared at him, then without looking at the circle of men, he broke into a run, remembering his earlier feeling that someone, somewhere, had been reaching out
for him.
“The Duchess would have done far better,” Wat said, watching Thomas’ retreating figure, “to ask for a flask of good brandy-wine so that she can see out her last hours in a fog of happiness, instead of a damned Dominican who will speak to her of nothing but the horrors of hell.”
Then his face went expressionless as a terrible thought occurred to him.
Was Meg with the Duchess? Oh, sweet Meg, how fare you?
Wat Tyler had many strange associations in his past, but one of the strangest, and most secret, was with the woman Baron Raby had taken to his bed over the past few months.
MARGARET WAS trapped by the painful grip of Eleanor’s hand; if the Duchess had not held on to her she would have fled long before this.
Eleanor was bleeding to death before her eyes.
She had been in labor a mere twelve hours, but in those hours the pain had worsened until the woman lay writhing and screaming about her bed, and in those twelve the babe had not shifted for all the effort its mother put into its birthing.
The midwife was still nowhere to be found, and Margaret knew that if she ever found the woman, she would personally string her up from the nearest tree.
About midday Eleanor had begun to bleed. At first it was little more than a showing of blood-stained fluid that Margaret hoped indicated that the baby was finally ready to be born, but within the hour this innocuous fluid had become thick blood that clotted and congealed among the twisting sheets.
Neither Margaret, nor the duchess’ waiting lady, Mary, had known what to do—and Eleanor herself had panicked at the sight of so much blood.
She had begun to scream, and her screams and writhings had only ceased after two hours when she’d become pale and clammy with the constant loss of blood.
She had clutched at Margaret’s hands. “You must save me. I don’t want to die … I don’t want to die.”
All Margaret could do was to offer useless words. What else could she do?
She’d never had any experience at this kind of birth . . . it was so different… so different…
“Where is the midwife?” Eleanor whispered.
“Madam, I don’t know.” And if the midwife was here, then could she do anything?
Eleanor lapsed into silence, her skin now gray and cold, her eyes dull, her belly humping reproachfully toward the peak of the chamber. Every so often Mary would take the blood-clotted linens from under Eleanor’s body and replace them with fresh ones.
They would be soaked as soon as Mary drew back the sheet to preserve Eleanor’s modesty.
Why all this trouble to birth a child? Margaret thought, cold and shaking with horror. Why does God make them suffer so?