Richard's horse reared and snorted, and the boy pulled him in and away from Wat, who lay thrashing on the ground, while Walworth and the squire hacked at him with furious blows of sword and cutlass.
"What's happening?" cried voices from the rebel side. "Wat's down, what is't?" And someone else, seeing a sword flash, cried, "The King is knighting Wat!"
Cob from his tree saw differently. Soon they all saw - Wat's terrified horse galloped across the field dragging the tiler's dying, bleeding body by the stirrup.
"Christe, Christe!" cried John Ball in a voice of agony. "They've killed Wat!"
The rebel army stood gaping, paralysed. The lords across Smithfield drew back white-faced and murmuring. Richard sat his horse stiffly in the centre of the field. Then there was a ripple of movement down the rebel line. Here and there a bowman unslung his bow uncertainly and drew arrow from his quiver. No one else moved. They waited for some signal, but none came.
Richard looked at the bow-tips that twinkled in the sun, the arrows being slowly notched and pointing down the field at him. He flung his head back and dug the golden spurs of knighthood into his horse's flanks. He galloped straight towards the rebel lines and shouted, "So now I shall be your leader, as you wished me to!"
The bowstrings slackened. The rebels looked at one another, at Wat's body and up at the shining crowned youth who beckoned to them.
"Ay!" they cried. "Our little King is leader! Richard! Richard! We hold wi' you, Richard!"
A bondsman from Essex ran out from the crowd, cast himself to his knees and kissed Richard's foot. The King looked down at him and smiled.
The mayor had galloped up behind and pulling his horse near said in a low voice, "Lead them to Clerkenwell, Your Grace, and keep them there, I'll soon be up with reinforcements." He spurred his horse and headed into town.
"Follow me, good people!" Richard called. "Follow now your King!"
The peasant army gazed up at him with confiding trust. Had he not given them their freedom? Had he not shown himself their friend? Richard wheeled his horse and started off up along the Fleet towards the open farmlands, past the smoking ruins of the treasurer's priory that they had fired.
When Walworth and Sir Robert Knolles arrived later with troops and the hastily summoned citizenry, the mayor also bore with him Wat the tiler's head mounted on a pike. The rebels stared at Wat's head in terror and turning again to the King begged for mercy, which he sweetly granted, looking like the young St. George himself as he smiled at them all and accepted their homage.
The peasants' great revolt was ended.
They dispersed fast and were permitted to leave, most of them exceeding joyful, for they had their charters and the King's word that they were free; and when they understood that Wat had drawn a traitor's dagger against the King, they conceded that his death had been inevitable. Nor did those who lingered deem it unfitting when they looked back and saw that the King was knighting Mayor William Walworth.
Only a handful were heavy-hearted on that Saturday night and joined John Ball, who fled up towards the Midlands crying that this day's deeds were not as God had willed it, that the fellowship must go on, that its work was but half completed, crying, "Put not your trust in princes!" Few listened to him.
Cob left London too that night. He joined a company of homegoing northerners who had not yet their charters, but one of the King's men explained that there was no cause to wait, soon proclamation would be made throughout the land that serfdom was abolished.
So Cob and his companions started on the North road to Waltham, and as they marched they sang.
CHAPTER XXVI
The fine weather broke during that night while most of the rebels were marching home, and Sunday morning in London dawned in a sticky drizzle. The loft above the fish-shop was dank and grey when Katherine opened her eyes. She lay quietly for a time on the feather bed looking up at the rafters and wondering exactly where she was, aware at first only of hunger and weakness and that there was a sore place on the back of her head. She knew that a long time had passed since she had been fully aware, though she had a confused memory of wandering through streets with Cob o' Fenton, of lying down up here and waking sometimes to drink water; but mostly she had slept. There had been a confusion of terrible dreams: sinister faces leering like gargoyles - Jack Maudelyn, his jaw jutting out one-sided in a monstrous way, a man with a red beard who, while shattering Avalon's window-panes with a pike, counted inanely, "Oon, twa, tree - -" There had been a huge glowering black-jowled man who kept saying, "Who are ye then?" There had been sticky pools of blood with Joli-coeur's crystal splinters glittering in them.
Katherine twisted her head from side to side to throw off the clinging haze of horror, but the dream memories persisted. Now she saw Brother William's pallid doomed face as he cried out, "God in His mercy save you, Katherine!" and heard the dull squashing thud before he fell by the fireplace. She saw Blanchette in a blood-soaked grey chamber robe, smiling a secret smile, curtsying to the man who asked, "Who are ye then?"
Katherine shuddered and sat up dizzily. Her gaze focused slowly and was caught by the little wooden Calvary that stood on a bracket above a Pessoner clothes coffer. She stared at the cross, which was the size of Brother William's crucifix and of the same dark wood, she stared until it wavered and grew, until it loomed big as a window and blotted out all light behind it.
"No," she whispered, shrinking back on to the bed, "Jesu, NO!" She pushed her hands out in front of her as though she pushed against a falling weight. Her breath came ragged and fast. After a moment she pulled herself off the bed and looked down at her green gown. It was cut short below the knees and spotted with little charred holes. This is the gown I put on Thursday morning in the garde-robe when Brother William came to warn us, to warn me and Blanchette. She lifted the skirt and looked at her shift; there were scorches on it, and red burns in the flesh of her thighs.
"God have mercy on me," said Katherine aloud, "for those were no dreams." Her nails dug deep into her sweating palms, she stumbled through the door towards the stairs.
An hour ago Master Guy had brought Dame Emma back from St. Helen's priory, the danger being over; and the good-wife was standing by the hearth directing the maids, who were setting the place to rights again.
Dame Emma started as Katherine wavered down the stairs clinging to the rail. "Sweet Mother Mary!" cried Emma running to her, "Guy said ye were asleep - dear, dear." She clicked her tongue as she saw Katherine's gown, the matted tangled hair.
"Blanchette - -" said Katherine in a faint dead voice.
"I must find Blanchette. She ran away in the Savoy - what day is it now?"
" 'Tis Sunday," said Dame Emma. "But ye can't go anywhere like that, my lady. Sit down!" she cried sharply as Katherine swayed. "God love us, what's happened?"
"Happened enough, in truth," said the fishmonger. Now that the revolt was over, he was expansive with relief. "Poor lass's been lying up there mizzy-headed for days."
At his wife's shocked exclamation he said defensively, "Old Elias, he looked to her, brought her water."
Dame Emma poured forth a stream of anxious inquiry, then checked it for more practical matters. She made Katherine sit on the settle and put a pillow to her head. She fed her wine sip by sip until faint colour came back to the hollow cheeks.
Katherine did all that she was told and concentrated her mind on regaining strength fast. By noon the swimming feebleness had gone, and she was ready.