Long Will Part 14

Meanwhile Calote sat in the window-seat.

"Do not hold me on thy knee, Etienne," said Richard presently; "methinks 't is not fitting. I will stand on my feet. Where is the maid?"

"Drink, sire!" said Etienne. "'T will cure thy head." And he steadied the goblet at the lips of the King.

The page stood by, grinning.

"I listened," quoth he. "I was behind the arras when the messenger spake. I ran like the wind. Why doth yonder maid sit in the King's presence?"

"Mother of G.o.d!" exclaimed Calote, and jumped down in haste, very red.

And Richard laughed.

But in a moment he was grave again.

"Mayhap I should weep for my grandfather," he said. "I know he was a great king. But my father would have been a greater than he, an he had lived. I weep still, of nights, because my father is dead."

"Begone!" whispered Etienne to the page. "Haply they seek the King.

Tell the Queen-Mother he is here."

Calote came and knelt on both her knees before Richard.

"Thou, also, shalt be a great king," she cried.

But he shook his head.

"I do not know," he mused. "How little am I! The n.o.bles are great, and they do not love me,--not as my father loved. Men say mine uncle hath it in his heart to kill me."

"O sire! the people love thee!" cried Calote. "The people is thy friend; they hold to thee for thy father's sake; and if thou be friend and brother to them, be sure they will hold to thee for thine own.

Wilt thou be king of common folk, sire? Wilt thou right the wrongs of thy poor? Now G.o.d and Wat Tyler forgive me if I betray aught. But hearken! The people has a great plot whereby they hope to rise against this power of the n.o.bles, this evil power that eateth out the heart of this kingdom. If this thing come to pa.s.s, wilt thou go with the n.o.bles, or wilt thou go with thy poor?"

"I hate the n.o.bles!" cried Richard pa.s.sionately. "Have I not told thee? I hate mine uncle the Duke, and Thomas of Woodstock that tosseth me in air as I were a shuttlec.o.c.k. I hate Salisbury, and Devon,--yea, even the Earl of March, Etienne. They do not love me. Their eyes are cold; and when they smile upon me I could kill them. I will go with the common folk, they are my people."

"There will not be a king so great as thou, nor so beloved!" cried Calote. "But this that I told thee is secret."

"Is 't?--Well!" said Richard eagerly,--"I do love a secret. Etienne will tell thee how close I have kept his own."

He swelled his little chest and spread his legs.

"Now am I right glad. Mine uncles have their secrets. So will I likewise. And I am King."

Then the tapestry lifted, and there came into the room a n.o.ble lady, and two other following after; and all these had been a-weeping.

"O madame!" cried Richard, and went and cast himself into the arms of this lady. "My grandfather is dead, and we are in sore straits. Would G.o.d my father were alive this day." So he began to sob; and the Queen-Mother took him up in her arms and bore him away, and her ladies went also.

But of three young gentlemen that stood in the doorway with torches, for now the day was spent, one only departed,--and he perforce, for the pa.s.sage was darker than this room, and the ladies called for light. But the other two came in, and:--

"Here 's where thou 'rt hid!" they cried. "By St. Thomas o'

Canterbury, a fair quarry!"

They thrust their torches in Calote's sweet face and set their impudent young eyes upon her. Yet did her loveliness somewhat abash them.

"Sirs," said Etienne, "ye do annoy this damosel. Pray you, stand farther off!"

"Is 't thy leman, or dost instruct the Prince?" asked he that was elder of these two lads.

"For shame, Sir John!" said Etienne. "Moreover, I beseech you use more reverence toward the King, since he is come to his inheritance."

"Ah!" cried Calote. The other lording had taken off her kerchief, so that her hair was loosened; and now he knelt to lift her ragged skirt where her white ankle showed, and he touched this little ankle delicately, the while he looked up in her face and said:--

"Shall I kiss thy foot, mistress? Yet, say the word and I 'll kiss thy lips. Wilt play with me? Thou shalt find me more merry paramour than"--

But Etienne caught him by the collar as he knelt, and flung him off, so that his head struck by the wall. He arose with a rueful countenance and would have drawn his sword, but Sir John Holland went to him and they two whispered together and departed.

"Come!" said Stephen, "the street is safer for thee. If I know aught of the young Earl of Oxford, they will return and play some devil's trick. Come! Wilt trust me? I know a way not by the gate."

She was weeping soft, but she gave her hand into his and let him lead her through dark ways to a garden and a hedge; and so he crawled through a small hole and drew her after him, and they ran across a field to the high road.

"Do not weep!" he whispered. "I will protect thee with my life."

"I am not afeared," she answered him; "but, alas! who would be a maid and not weep?"

They came upon the road where it made a turning away from the great gate of the palace, and here was a tall man pacing in the dusk.

"Father!" Calote cried joyfully.

But though the squire made as he were content, yet he sighed.

Natheless, when he was come back to the round chamber, he found a white something on the floor, which was Calote's little kerchief. And this he put to his lips many times, and folded it, and thrust it inside his jerkin, on the left side.

CHAPTER X

Plot and Counterplot

Now Richard was not yet crowned before he--or they that put words in his mouth--had set free Peter de la Mare from Nottingham Castle. And for this there was great rejoicing. Peter came up to London as he had been Thomas a Becket returned out of exile. London gave him gifts; he was honoured of the city; merchants feasted him.

'T was on the night after the merry-making that Wat Tyler and Jack Straw came again to Cornhill, and they were not much elate. They said: "New brooms sweep clean;" and "Well eno' to watch the kitten at play, but 't will grow a cat;" and that this folk was a fool: 't saw no further than its own nose; let it laugh now, but presently there would be more taxing. And so on, of this man and that, in Kent and Suss.e.x and Norfolk, that followed John Ball and would be ready--when the time was come.

Meanwhile Calote sat on her father's knee and listened. This secret that she had discovered to the King was no true plot at that time; nevertheless, it began to be one. Since the year of the first pestilence, which year was the two and twentieth in the reign of Edward III., and the third after the Black Prince gained the victory over the French at Crecy,--since this year, the common folk did not cease to murmur. And this was the beginning of their murmuring, because in that dire pestilence more than the half of all the people of England died, and the corn rotted in the field for lack of husbandry.

Now it was an old law in England that the villein, which was bound to the soil where he was born, must till the soil for his lord, giving him service in days' labour; and, in return therefor, the villein had leave to till certain acres for his own behoof. But this law was fallen into disuse in a many places afore the pestilence time, and if a villein would, he might discharge his service in a payment of money to his lord, and so be quit; and the lord's bailiff hired other labourers to till the manor. And this was a good way, for the villein got more time wherein to till his own land, or to ply his trade, and the lord's bailiff got better men,--they that laboured doing so of free-will for hire, and without compelling.

Then came pestilence and knocked at every man's door; and where there had been ten men to till the soil there was one now, and the one would not work for the old wage, for he said, "Corn is dear." And this was true, there being none to harvest the corn. So every man served him who would pay the highest wage,--whether his own lord or the lord of another manor. But the lords, becoming aware, said, "How shall this be? For by the law the villein is bound to the soil and must labour on the manor where he was born; yet here be villeins that journey from place to place like free men, and barter service; neither will they labour for their own lord except it like them, and for hire."

After this there was pa.s.sed in Parliament the Statute of Labourers, whereby it was declared that:--

"Every man or woman of whatsoever condition, free or bond, able in body, and within the age of threescore years ... and not having of his own whereof he might live, nor land of his own about the tillage of which he might occupy himself, and not serving any other, should be bound to serve the employer who should require him to do so, and should take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the neighbourhood where he was bound to serve, two years afore that plague befel."