They looked at each other, these two—Fulk, like a man who stares into
the heart of a fire; Isoult, with eyes that showed at first no more than
a tired wonder. She saw the red bridle tighten, the white horse draw in.
Then the truth leapt at her out of the eyes that had flashed with a
startled swiftness to hers.
Then she saw the red bridle jerked and Fulk’s profile, stark and clear,
as he pressed his heels into the white horse’s flanks. God, how nearly
he had betrayed himself when his heart had leapt in him with a cry of
“Isoult, Isoult!”
All the blood in his body seemed thundering into his brain. He had to
steady himself, clench his teeth, fix his eyes on the tops of the
houses, ride on without so much as another side glance.
She was not dead then, but living, with red lips and raven hair. How had
it happened? Was she a traitress after all, and had she but tricked
Merlin to save him out of pity? Pity! He looked as though he had been
struck with a whip, his face white as a frost, with tense lips and
quivering nostrils. Pity!
Wrath blew through him like a winter wind. She might betray him—he who
was playing the King—if he had betrayed himself to her in that one
flash of the eyes! He set his teeth. And then from some more passionate
memory a braver faith leapt to the challenge. What ignoble thoughts were
these! She was alive, but what might life have meant to her, to a falcon
with a broken wing? He seemed to see Merlin grinning at him from under
his cowl—Merlin with the lean and hungry mouth and the big teeth that
glistened.
His heart cried out with new passion, “Isoult, Isoult!”
He found Salisbury riding at his side and staring at him with curious
eyes.
“Sir, you look grim.”
Fulk twisted out a smile.
“Good sir, that may be true. I would ask for nothing better than to
trample on these gentry as one tramples on corn.”
“S’death, go gently. Speak them fair. Make promises. We must humour the
beast till we have the twitch on his nose.”
“The King makes for the King to break. My lord, I take you.”
So “The King behind the King” rode on.
Isoult was still standing in the wagon, staring like a blind woman at
the White Tower. The brown figures beside her had swarmed down to follow
the King’s banners, and the crowd had melted like mist, some hundreds of
the rougher sort charging down to the gate that had been seized by Wat
the Tiler and Jack Straw.
A man climbed into the wagon and touched her shoulder, and, turning
sharply, she looked into the eyes of Guy the Stallion.
“Come, girl, all the fun of the fair! Am I to miss it because I am your
gallant?”
She let him draw her to the tail end of the wagon, but when he sprang
down and would have put his arms about her to lift her to the ground she
repulsed him fiercely.
“Off, fool!”
He snarled, and showed his teeth.
“I hold the end of the leash, my falcon, and, by cock, you are too fine
a bird to be lost.”
She went with him, mute with scorn, yet conscious of her own
helplessness and that she was at the mercy of such men as these.
Moreover, she was still blinded to all other things but that vision of
Fulk Ferrers, turned King, and riding a great white horse. She might
have let him go by with nothing more than astonishment that two mortal
creatures should be so alike, but for the way his eyes had fallen on
her.
As they passed through the gate she glanced at Guy, who carried his
naked sword over his shoulder, and her heart leapt in her at the thought
of the bold game Fulk was playing. How had it come about? Where was the
real King? Why had the great lords ventured on such a hazard? Had they
set him up with his hawk’s eyes and the proud throw back of his head to
play a part that was beyond the courage of the stripling Richard? Would
he carry it through, tame this herd of wild beasts, and turn them again
into quiet oxen? And what if the trick were discovered? What of Merlin,
the Grey Friar?
She heard Guy rap out an oath.
“Bones of the saints, here’s blood!”
A shouting mob came pouring through one of the inner gateways. Carried
in the midst, like a man in a mill-race, was Simon of Sudbury, the
Archbishop, and Chancellor. His vestments had been half torn from him.
His white face was splashed with blood, the mouth awry, the eyes
staring.
Guy pressed Isoult back against a wall.
“S’death, they have caught Master Simon! I know that fat face of his.”
Wat the Tiler broke away from the crowd, and his beard was all froth and
spittle from shouting.
“Friend Guy, there are swine to be stuck in yonder. Rout them out—the
Prior of St. John, and some of Lancaster’s rats.”
He stared hard into Isoult’s eyes.
“Go and show the Red Queen a fine colour. Simon of Sudbury’s head is
going to dance on a pike.”
When the mob had passed Guy seized her wrist and drew her on, and she
went with him, mutely, as though the old Isoult were dead in her, the
Isoult who could rule men with a flash of the eyes. She thought of Fulk
on his white horse riding out proudly to face these boors, and she
prayed fiercely that he might fool them. She was weary of this mob
adventure; and, loathing these hinds with a great loathing, she believed
once more in the pride of the sword, scorning the baser clay that stank
of the potter’s hands.
They reached the great court about the White Tower, and here Bedlam—a
bloody Bedlam—had been let loose. The mob swarmed everywhere. They had
driven a dozen of the King’s knights into a corner and were pulling
their beards and spitting in their faces. Two hacked bodies lay close to
the chapel entry, the bodies of two of John of Gaunt’s men who had been
caught in his hated colours. From the windows of the White Tower came
yells and curses. A man leant out, waving a red hand.
“Taken—taken—bully Robert Hales!”
The mob roared.
“Bring him out! Throw him down!”
A whirl of figures came down the outer steps with an old man in their
midst. His fierce white beard stuck out under a grim mouth; the
swineherds and scullions had not cowed him.
They dragged him this way and that, like hounds pulling at a fox.
“A horse-block! A horse-block!”
One was found and rolled forward, and Sir Robert Hales thrown across it,
face upwards, his hands clutching the air.
Guy rushed forward, and jostled through.
“My stroke, sirs. Room, room! I’ll do’t at one swash!”
Isoult quailed, and turned away.
The door of the White Tower stood open at the head of the steps down
which the men of Kent had dragged Sir Robert Hales. The steps themselves
were deserted for the moment, and Isoult climbed them and fled into the
cool gloom of the great tower, trying to forget the sight of the old man
flung face upwards across the horse-block. A desire to escape from these
wretches seized her, and she fled along passages and up stairways,
knowing not where she went, but seeking for some place where she might
hide.
Loud laughter and a pother of rough voices broke suddenly from a room at
the top of a short flight of broad steps. Isoult heard the proud, but
appealing voice of a woman and the laughter seemed to falter and die
down.
The door was half open, and Isoult, gliding along the wall, climbed the
steps and peered through the gap at the hinges.
It was a noble room hung with sky-blue arras dusted with silver stars,
and over by the window stood a great bed covered with a canopy of purple
cloth. Hutches and chests had been broken open, and rich clothes and
stuffs of cloth of silver and gold had been scattered about the floor.
In the bed sat the Princess, the King’s mother, white as her own night
gear. Three women cowered in a corner. A dozen or more peasants were
crowded round, snapping their fingers in the Princess’s face, jeering,
and threatening to pull the clothes from her, and thrusting the points
of their pikes into the bed.
“Men of Kent, have you forgotten Edward the Black Prince?”
She faced them fearlessly, in spite of deathly fear, and the white pride
of her face was like a white flame, keeping the men back. They were awed
and, a little ashamed, faltered, grinned at each other, and then slunk
back towards the door.
Isoult hid herself in a dark recess in the thickness of the wall, and
they went crowding down the stairs past her.
“I’ve seen the King’s mother a’bed, Jock!”
“That be some’at to remember!”
Isoult was still in hiding when one of the Princess’s women came to the
door and ran down the flight of steps. She looked this way and that like
a frightened deer, and then, putting her hands to her mouth, called up
the great stairway.
“Eustace! Geoffrey!”
She stood listening, her face strained and expectant. Down the stairway
came two men, descending step by step, the one in front craning his head
forward to see that the way was clear.
“Quick, for the love of Our Lady. The wretches have been here!”
They disappeared with the woman into the Princess’s room.
Some instinct kept Isoult hidden in the dark recess. She heard voices,
eager, conspiring voices that spoke in hurrying undertones. Then,
footsteps approached. The door creaked; there was the sound of heavy
breathing. A woman came out and went gliding down the stairs to see that
they were clear. She called back, “Come.”
Isoult saw the Princess carried out on a mattress laid upon the frame of
a pallet bed. The men were at the head and foot, a woman at each side. A
purple quilt covered the Princess, who lay with a veil thrown over her
head.
They disappeared round a bend of the stairs, and curiosity made Isoult
follow them, shadowing them round each corner and along each gallery as
they went down and down into the deeps of the tower. She nearly betrayed
herself at the end of a long, dim passage where a door had to be opened
and the Princess’s bed forced through.
Then an oblong patch of daylight shone out abruptly. A flight of steps
went up towards it, and Isoult saw the bed-bearers struggling up towards
the light.
Near the top of the steps one of the men missed his footing and slipped
sideways against the wall. The bed tilted. There was a cry. One of the
women clutched the Princess, but Isoult saw a lad’s head and shoulders
jerked out from under the quilt.
There was a moment’s agony. The bed was righted; the lad thrust back
under the quilt. One of the women who had crept on ahead came back,
waving them forward. The knot of figures struggled out into the daylight
and disappeared from Isoult’s view.
She ran up the steps, and her eyes came level with the flagstones of a
small courtyard. The men and women had carried the bed across it, and
were disappearing through a doorway in the opposite wall. One of the
women glanced back anxiously over her shoulder, for she could hear men
coming down a long slope that led into the courtyard. She did not see
Isoult.
Then they vanished through the doorway, and Isoult climbed the last
steps, and running across the court, laid her cheek to the doorpost, and
peered round. A sloping passage went down under a vaulted roof, and at
the end of it she saw water swishing to and fro, and the legs of a man
standing beside the black snout of a barge.
All of a sudden she understood. Richard the King was hidden in that bed,
and they were smuggling him out of the Tower lest this bold trick should
be betrayed.
She heard voices behind her, and starting back into the courtyard, found
herself looking into the eyes of Guy the Stallion. He carried a bloody
sword over his shoulder, and some of the lowest curs from out of the
city were at his heels.
“Hullo, my wench, what tricks have you been playing?”
He caught her by the bosom, and she humoured him, knowing Fulk’s peril
and her own.
“Playing at hide and seek with the Knight of the Bloody Sword, O brave
Sir Guy!”
She laughed in his face.
“Come. I hear the Princess is above. I have a desire to look on a
Princess.”
“By cock, you shall. We’ll show her a comelier woman than herself.”