A DEMAGOGUE AND HIS DESPERADOES
The crowd driven so unceremoniously from Westminster did not separate
before agreeing to assemble again at a given signal; and no sooner did
Bow bell toll the hour of curfew, than, like bees swarming from their
hives, all the desperadoes and riff-raff of London assembled from lanes,
and alleys, and slums, and the purlieus of the Thames, and, joined by
many hundreds who were neither desperadoes nor riff-raff, but honest men
led away by the excitement of the hour, filled the narrow streets, and,
jostling each other as they went, made for St. Paul’s Churchyard. Here
Constantine Fitzarnulph, accompanied by two or three other persons whom
he had allured into his enterprise, was ready to receive them and place
himself at their head.
And then Fitzarnulph mounted a temporary platform, and harangued the mob
in such inflammatory language, that their excitement was rapidly
converted into frenzy, and they raved like maniacs. No longer
condescending, as in former days, to treat the Anglo-Norman barons as
friends, he denounced them as tyrants and oppressors who ground the
faces of the poor, and lived in luxury by the sweat of their neighbours’
brows. Proceeding, he attacked the young king and his ministers, and
traced suffering and sorrow to the misgovernment that prevailed, and
asked whether there was not something radically wrong in a system under
which such oppression could exist. He concluded with a fierce invective
against the Abbot of Westminster and his steward, and called on the
Londoners to wipe out the disgrace they had that day suffered in the
person of their champion, Martin Girder, who, he asserted, had been
foiled by foul means; finally, either by premeditated design, or led
away by his own enthusiasm and the cheers with which he was greeted, he
boldly stated that there was only one remedy for their woes, and that
was to invite Prince Louis to return to England, and deliver them from
the evils under which they were groaning. “Montjoie, St. Denis!”
exclaimed he, in conclusion, as he waved his hat. “God help us and our
good Lord Louis!”
The desperadoes loudly applauded the proposal to recall the French
prince, just as they would have applauded if Fitzarnulph had proposed to
invoke the aid of the prince of darkness. But some of the crowd
murmured, and the oration, especially towards its close, seemed to give
great offence to a young warrior who stood by Fitzarnulph’s side.
Several times while the harangue was drawing to a close he started as if
to interrupt, but on each occasion checked the impulse. But no sooner
did Fitzarnulph, waving his hat, shout “Montjoie, St. Denis!” than he
raised a very noble countenance towards the demagogue, and eyed him with
a glance of fiery scorn. It was Walter Merley.
“Citizen,” said he, after forcing himself to be calm, “your speech to
this multitude has belied all your professions to me, and I despise you
as one whom the truth is not in. You have basely deceived me, and shame
upon me that I have been fooled by such as you are! and, but that I deem
you all unworthy of my steel, you should have three inches of my dagger
to punish your presumptuous perfidy, and silence your lying tongue.
Come, Rufus, let us begone!”
A shout of indignation arose from the mob on hearing their hero thus
bearded, and several of the desperadoes moved as if to lay hands on the
bold speaker, but he paid no attention to their cries and gestures.
Calling one of his companions to follow, he strode right through the
midst, and that with an air so fearless and fierce, that they opened
their ranks and made way for him to pass, and carried their hostility no
further than uttering a yell and indulging in a little banter as he
disappeared.
“Now,” said he, as he took a boat and was rowed towards the Surrey side,
“farewell to home and country; and, since fortune so wills, let my lot
be among strangers and in a strange land. All over Europe and in Syria
swords are flashing bravely, and it will go hard with me if I carve not
out a principality with my sword, which has never failed me. Shame upon
me that I allowed myself to be fooled by that citizen! and a malison on
his presumption in fancying that, after deceiving me, he could use me
for his purposes!”
Meanwhile, Fitzarnulph did not allow the excitement of the mob to
evaporate. Finding that they were quite in the humour in which he
wished them to be, he proposed to go forthwith to Westminster.
“Our first duty,” said he, “is to avenge ourselves on the abbot and his
steward; and the best way to avenge ourselves on them is to pull down
their houses, whereby they will be made sensible that the citizens of
London are not to be affronted with impunity. So let us on. Montjoie,
St. Denis! God for us and Lord Louis!”
“To Westminster!” shouted the desperadoes; and, led by Fitzarnulph, the
mob descended Ludgate-hill, and pushed through the gates like so many
furies.
It was already sunset when Fitzarnulph led the mob from St. Paul’s
Churchyard, and darkness was descending ere they reached Westminster.
Many of the desperadoes, however, had furnished themselves with torches,
and what with the glare of the torches, and the fierce faces of the
desperadoes, and the brandishing of weapons and bludgeons, and the
shouts, the screeches, the bellowing, and the confusion, the inhabitants
might, even had they been less superstitious than they were, have
imagined that a host of fiends was upon them.
Great was the alarm, loud the shouts for aid, each man calling on his
neighbour, as the startled indwellers suddenly found their houses and
hearths exposed to such danger, and at the mercy of such a multitude.
But it soon appeared that the mob were, in the first place, intent on
vengeance, and went direct to destroy the houses of the abbot and his
steward. Warned in time, the abbot fled, trembling for his life, and,
getting into his barge, escaped to Lambeth. Determined to defend himself
and his property, the steward drew bolt and bar, and armed his
household. But a few minutes’ experience told him that resistance was
vain, and, escaping with his household by the rear, he left his home to
its fate. The riot and uproar then became more terrible every moment;
house after house was torn down or given to the flames; and the mob,
whooping, and yelling, and braying, as their appetite for destruction
was whetted, rushed into outrage after outrage, and enacted such a scene
as Westminster had seldom or never witnessed.
And what was Constantine Fitzarnulph doing all this time?
Fitzarnulph, in truth, had other game, as his movements speedily
indicated, than the abbot and his steward, and, leaving the mob to
destroy and plunder without restraint, he proceeded with a chosen band
of twenty desperadoes towards Scotland-yard, and on to a house that
stood in a garden on the margin of the river. At first he endeavoured to
gain access by gentle means, and loudly knocked at the gate. No answer
was returned, and he ordered the desperadoes to break it open. His
command was immediately obeyed, and he passed into a courtyard, and
knocked vehemently at the door; but, seeing that his knock at the door
was as little regarded as his knock at the gate had been, the
desperadoes broke it open, and Fitzarnulph, making a signal to the band
to remain where they were till summoned by him, entered alone, found
several domestics, who fled at his approach, ascended a stair, and,
advancing along a corridor, opened a door and entered.
It was a large chamber, furnished after the fashion of the period,
brilliantly lighted, and occupied by four women, who, alarmed at the
riot and the uproar, and the breaking in of the gate and door, were
giving themselves up for lost. One was Beatrix de Moreville, another
Dame Waledger, and the other two were Beatrix’s waiting-women. As
Fitzarnulph entered, a simultaneous cry of horror and despair burst from
their lips, and three of them fell on their knees. De Moreville’s
daughter, however, rose to her feet, and stood facing the intruder with
an air of haughty defiance which showed that, gentle as was her usual
manner she inherited some portion of her sire’s spirit.
“What seek you here, sir citizen?” asked she, with a gesture and in a
tone before which most men, under the circumstances, would have quailed.
“Demoiselle,” answered Fitzarnulph with equal pride, “it is vain to
assume such airs at the stage at which matters have arrived; vainer
still to deem that I, Constantine Fitzarnulph, am likely to be daunted
by a haughty tone and a frowning brow. I therefore answer frankly--it is
you I seek. You have treated me with a scorn to which I am but little
accustomed; however, of that anon. You are at length in my power, once
and for ever, so prepare to go hence. My barge awaits you at the stairs
to convey you to a place of safety. Nay, frown not; I say it is vain;
for, come what may, by the blood of St. Thomas! ere to-morrow’s sun is
high in the heavens, you shall stand at the altar as Fitzarnulph’s
bride, and women neither less fair nor less exalted in rank than
yourself will envy your lot. I have said.”
Scorn, amazement, terror, succeeded each other rapidly in the face of
Beatrix de Moreville as Fitzarnulph spoke, and she was nerving herself
to reply when he advanced and seized her arm, as if to bear her off as
his prey; but she clung so tenaciously to Dame Waledger, who was
literally speechless with affright, that he found all his efforts to
separate them in vain. Suddenly he relaxed his grasp.
“Maiden,” said he, looking earnestly into her face, “you are fighting
against fate, and against a destiny you can no more avoid than you can
the death which comes to all flesh. You struggle in vain. It is not my
wont to be baffled, as the world well knows, and will yet know better.
Loath am I to use force, but, since you make it necessary, I needs must.
Below are twenty men, who, if I said the word, would bring me the head
of the pope or the caliph. One sound of this, and they come to my aid;”
and he pointed to a silver whistle that hung at his belt.
De Moreville’s daughter, retreating behind Dame Waledger, gazed with
alarm at the citizen, but did not venture to speak. It seemed that her
stock of courage was exhausted. Fitzarnulph appeared to hesitate. After
a moment’s pause, however, he took the whistle and sounded it loudly. As
he did so, voices were heard as if in altercation below; steps as of
persons ascending, and the ring of steel on the stone stairs, succeeded;
and then there entered, not the twenty desperadoes, but Oliver Icingla,
with his spurs of gold on his heels and his trusty sword in his hand,
just as he had jumped from his good steed Ayoub.
De Moreville’s daughter uttered an exclamation of rapturous surprise,
and darted forward to throw herself on the young knight’s protection.
Fitzarnulph stood as much like an image of stone as if the heir of the
Icinglas had brought the Gorgon’s head in his hand.