London (75 page)

“Help me,” she whispered. When he asked what the matter was: “It’s Ben,” she cried softly. “I can’t find him. I’m so afraid he’ll get himself hurt.”

“I shouldn’t worry,” he reassured her. “He can’t be far. And none of the rebels have entered the city yet,” he added. But at this she only shook her head.

“You don’t understand,” she hissed. “It’s the other way round.” And seeing him baffled: “I think he’s gone to join them. I think he’s at Blackheath.”

Ducket enjoyed the walk. As it went towards the south-east, the Kent road rose gently from the valley floor up the series of terraces that led to the higher ground, until, at the point where the river completed its big southern loop at the hamlet of Greenwich, it emerged on the sweeping ridge above. Here, on a broad plateau running eastward under open skies, lay the great expanse of heathland known as Blackheath.

He joined a stream of people along the way. Whether they wished to join the rebels or were there out of curiosity, they were coming out from the villages all around: from Clapham and from Battersea behind him, from Bermondsey and Deptford down by the river. Considerable numbers of the Essex men from Mile End had also taken ferries across the river to fraternize with the men from Kent. Yet even so, Blackheath took his breath away.

He had never seen a crowd like this before and could hardly guess their number: fifty thousand, perhaps? The huge, informal camp, bathed in the warm light of the early summer evening, spread across the heath for over a mile. There were a few fires alight, a scattering of tents and some horses and wagons; but most of the folk there were just resting on the ground, having walked sixty miles from Canterbury. They were country folk. Ducket saw broad, sunburned faces, peasant smocks, stout boots. In the June warmth, many wore no leggings. Everywhere there was the rich, pleasant smell of folk who had been working on farms. But most noticeable of all was their temper. He had expected to find a sullen and angry army; yet few of the peasants carried arms, and they seemed cheerful. It’s more like a holiday than a battle, he thought.

He was afraid he would never find Carpenter, but after a quarter of an hour he spotted him, talking to some Kentish craftsmen. Hoping the solemn fellow would not mind that he had followed him up there, Ducket went over to him.

Carpenter seemed delighted to see him. He looked more animated than usual. After introducing the apprentice to his friends, he took him by the arm and led him across to a spot from where they could see a figure on horseback, giving directions to some men. “That’s Tyler,” the craftsman said, and Ducket gazed at the sturdy figure. He was wearing a leather jerkin, with bare arms, and his swarthy face had already assumed a look of command.

When Ducket suggested gently that Amy was concerned about him, and that Dame Barnikel was getting ready to defend the George Inn against the rebel horde when it attacked, Carpenter only laughed. “You don’t understand,” he said. “These good people,” he gestured around him, “are all loyal. They’ve come to save the kingdom. The king himself,” he explained, “is coming to a parley here tomorrow, and once he’s heard us, everything will be all right.” He smiled. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

To Ducket this sounded unlikely, and he might have been tempted to argue, if there had not, just then, been a movement on the southern edge of the gathering. Some men were drawing up an open cart. A whisper seemed to be running through the whole camp; and already people were starting to get up and walk, as if drawn by some unseen hand, towards the cart. “Come on,” said Carpenter.

They got a good position, well forward, and did not have to wait long. Only minutes later, Tyler appeared; riding beside him on a grey mare came a tall, large-boned man in a brown cassock who, having dismounted, leaped up on to the cart. Straight away, he raised his hands and, in a deep voice that carried right across the heath, called out:

“John Ball greeteth you well, all.” And fifty thousand souls fell silent as a mouse.

The sermon of John Ball was unlike anything that Ducket had ever heard before. The theme was very simple: all men were born equal. If God had meant there to be masters and servants, He would have made it so at the Creation. Unlike Wyclif, who said that all authority must derive from God’s Grace, the popular preacher went much further. All lordship was evil; all wealth must be held in common. Until it was so, things would never go well in England.

But what language! Truly this preacher knew how to speak to the English heart. With rhyme and heavy alliteration he called out the phrases that could be remembered by every hearer. “Pride reigneth in palaces,” he cried. “Government is gluttony. Lawyers are lechers.” And at each phrase, Ducket could see Carpenter beside him nodding and muttering: “This is true. This is just.”

“Why is the lord warm in his manor and poor Peter Ploughman frozen in the field?” Ball demanded. “Now is the time,” he cried menacingly, “for John Trueman to chastise Hobbe the Robber. Take courage today. You shall smash them. With right and might. Will and skill.” It was the thick, strong, echoing language of their Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Then, returning to that simple biblical theme, he chanted loudly, so that not a man there could fail to hear, that couplet for which his sermons were famous, and which has remained like a haunting cry in the folk sayings of England ever since:

When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?

As he came to his conclusion with a loud Amen, the crowd let out a mighty roar. And Carpenter, his eyes solemnly shining, turned to Ducket and said: “Didn’t I tell you everything would be all right?”

Ducket had hoped to persuade Carpenter to return home after this, but the craftsman would not hear of it. “We must wait for the king,” he declared. So, cursing under his breath, Ducket remained to spend the night in the huge camp under the stars. As he moved about the camp, talking with these men from the countryside, he learned much. Many, like Carpenter, meant no harm at all. They had come to help the king set the world to rights. All that was needed, they assured him, was to rid the land of all authority. “Then,” they assured him, “men will be free.”

To Ducket the idea seemed strange. In London, he knew what freedom meant. It meant the city’s ancient privileges, the city walls which protected Londoners from the king’s soldiers or foreign traders and craftsmen. It meant that an apprentice could become a journeyman, and perhaps a master. It meant the guilds, the wards, the aldermen and mayor, as fixed in their places as the celestial spheres in the heavens. True, the poor folk might protest about the rich aldermen from time to time, especially if they evaded taxes. But even they knew the need for authority and order: without these, where was London’s freedom?

Yet in these countrymen he divined a quite different sense of things: an order not made by Man, but vaguer: the order of the seasons. The order of Man, to them, was not a necessity, as it was to the Londoner, but an imposition. “Who needs a master on the land?” asked one fellow. They dreamed of being free peasant farmers, like the Anglo-Saxons of old.

Ducket noticed something else, too. Asked where they came from, nearly all these peasants spoke of themselves proudly as men of Kent, or Kentish men, as if they were a tribe. Had he been across the Thames with the Essex men, it would have been the same. Angles, Jutes, the various groups of Saxons, Viking Danes and Celts – England like every country in Europe was still a patchwork of old tribal lands. And that evening Ducket began to understand what every wise ruler of England knew, that London was a community, but that the counties, in time of trouble, would always revert to a more ancient order.

If the men from Kent meant no harm to the king, as Carpenter assured him, Ducket was not so sure about their other intentions. When he asked one fellow what he thought of the sermon, the man replied: “He ought to be Archbishop of Canterbury.”

“He will be,” said his companion grimly, “when we’ve killed this one.”

Ducket mulled over these words as he went to sleep.

The dawn promised another fine day, but Ducket felt hungry and there did not seem to be any food in the camp. He wondered what would happen next. The sun had not been up long, however, when the whole company, on an order from Tyler, began to move over the edge of the heath and down the broad, handsome slope to the Thames at Greenwich. As they did so, Ducket realized that the huge horde of Essex men was gathering across the river opposite them.

They waited an hour. Another passed, and Ducket was ready to leave when he saw a large and handsome barge, accompanied by four others, being rowed down the stream towards them. It was the boy king. Ducket watched, fascinated, as the barge drew near. It was full of richly dressed men, the great ones of the kingdom, he supposed. But there was no mistaking the tall, slim, flaxen-haired youth who stood at the front for all to see. Richard II of England was fourteen. A few months before, having reached his majority, he had taken the reins of government into his own hands. His council, led by the terrified and hopeless archbishop, had begged him not to go. But the son of the Black Prince had courage. He was a fine figure, Ducket thought, standing there in the morning sunlight.

The roar that greeted him was huge and echoed across the river. The figures in the barge, except for the boy king, looked frightened. The barge was stopped about twenty yards from the bank. Then the young king raised his arm, the crowd hushed, and in a clear voice he called out to them.

“Sirs, I have come. What have you to say to me?” Ducket noticed that he had a slight stammer.

In answer came another roar in which Ducket could make out many cries. “Long live King Richard.” “Bless the king.” And more ominously: “Give us the archbishop’s head.” “Where are the traitors?” After a few moments, Ducket saw Tyler order some men to row out to the royal barge with a petition. He saw the king read it. “Tyler’s asking for the heads of all the traitors,” someone said close by. Then Ducket saw the king shrug, shake his head, and the royal barge turned round.

“Treason,” the crowd now roared. “Treason!” as the barge departed. Then came the cry: “Let’s march.”

English history would have been changed if the men on the bridge had only listened to Bull. Purple in the face, he stood in the middle of London Bridge, watched anxiously from the house by Tiffany, his wife and the servants, and bellowed at the alderman on the horse: “In the name of God, man, do as you were told. Raise the drawbridge.”

He was absolutely correct: the mayor’s instructions had been explicit. Yet as the huge horde from Kent swept through Southwark, this alderman in charge of the bridge refused his orders. “Leave it down,” he said.

Why? Was it treachery, as many later said? The charge made no sense. Fear of the mob if he crossed them? Possibly. But the day before, three of his fellow aldermen had gone out to Blackheath and reported back that Tyler and his men were loyal and harmless. It seems they had persuaded him and that now he had completely misread the situation.

“Don’t provoke them,” he said. “Let them through.”

“Idiot!” Bull shouted, rushed back to his house and started to bar the door and close every shutter. Minutes later, the house, with the Bull family inside, was engulfed in the moving mass.

Twice Ducket had hoped to stop his friend. As they swept towards the George, he caught sight of Dame Barnikel, standing grimly before the door with a club. He had tried to steer Carpenter towards her, for she could certainly have stopped him; but a sudden surge from behind carried them past. At London Bridge there was a crowd waiting to cross, while others were streaming along the south bank instead, towards Lambeth. “Turn back,” he begged. “There’s sure to be trouble.” But Carpenter refused. “No trouble,” he said. “You’ll see.”

And amazingly, as they crossed into the city, he seemed to be right. Tyler’s orders had been strict: no looting. The Londoners were cautious, but friendly. The men from Kent began to wander through the streets and Ducket saw them stop and pay for food and drink as they went by. The main body drifted along the Cheap, past St Paul’s and out through Newgate to Smithfield, in whose large space they set up camp. The good temper of the previous day seemed to have returned. By late morning, Ducket left his friend and, curious to see what else was happening, wandered right across the city. At Aldgate, he found the gate open and a steady trickle of Essex men from Mile End coming through. Chaucer was there too, watching them with a wry expression. “I don’t know why the gate opened,” he said. “They don’t seem to be after my books, anyway.” And he glanced up at the big room over the gate.

Ducket told him all he had seen and heard. “Could the peasants really take over?” he asked.

“It has been tried in other lands,” Chaucer said, “but never successfully.” He smiled. “Doesn’t it occur to you that Tyler would make himself king and soon his chief followers would be the new lords? As for today,” he went on, “there will be trouble.”

“How do you know?” Ducket asked.

“Because these fellows have nothing to do,” the poet replied.

He was proved right that afternoon. Ducket had not been back at Smithfield with Carpenter for an hour when he realized the crowd was getting restless. A few started singing. Something else was happening too. Mobs of Londoners had come to join them. Some were just apprentices, there for the fun; but others were of an uglier sort. Soon there were shouts, of anger. And then, whether on Tyler’s orders or of its own volition, the whole crowd suddenly gathered itself up and began to stream towards Westminster. Just before Charing Cross, they came to the huge, sprawling palace of the Savoy, the residence of no less a person than John of Gaunt. And now they had a target.

The whole Savoy was blazing. Soon, the huge symbol of feudal privilege by the Thames would be smouldering ashes. The looters – mostly London ruffians – had also been busy, despite Tyler’s orders. Ducket had watched in fascination, but also sadness, for it was a fine building; at his side, Carpenter had also watched, with a dazed look on his face, murmuring from time to time: “Yes, it must go. This is what must happen.” And, supposing his friend could come to no harm there, standing in the crowd, Ducket had walked a short way towards the Temple, where some of the lawyers’ lodgings were being fired, before coming back again to find that Carpenter had vanished. He looked about, could see no sign of him, and then glanced at the Savoy.