The shadow of the King kept hands from throats in the palace, but
grooms were breaking each others' heads in the stables till towards
morning. They fought about whether it were lawful to eat fish on a
Friday, and just after daybreak a gentleman's oarsman from
Sittingbourne had all his teeth to swallow for asserting that the
sacrament should be administered in the two kinds. The horses were
watered by ostlers who hummed the opprobrious song about Privy Seal,
called 'Crummock.'
In the hillocks and lawns of the park round the palace Lutherans
waited all night to welcome their Queen. They lit small fires on the
turf and, standing round them, sang triumphal hymns. A Princess was
coming from Cleves, a Lutheran; the day-spring from on high was
visiting them; soon, soon now, the axe and the flail should be given
into their hands.
In the dawn their boats could be seen pulling like water-beetles all
across the pallid river from the Essex shores. They clustered in grey
masses round the common steps.
A German horse merchant from the City pulled a putrid cat out of the
river mud and held it over his head. He shrieked: 'Hic hocus pocus,'
parodying the '_Hoc corpus meum_' of the Mass. The soldiers of the
Duke of Norfolk were unable to reach him for the crowd. There were but
ten of them, under a captain, set to guard the little postern in the
side wall of the garden. Towards ten o'clock the Mayor of London came
by land. He had with him all his brotherhood with their horses and
armed guards in a long train. The mayor and his aldermen had entrance
into the palace, but the Duke had given orders that men and horses
must bide in the park. There were forty battles of them, each of one
hundred men.
The great body came in sight, white, shining even in the grey among
the trees along the long garden wall.
'Body of God,' the captain said, 'there shall be broken crowns.' He
bade his men hold their pikes across, and paced unconcernedly up and
down before the door.
The City men came down in a solid body, and at sight of the red
crosses on their white shoulders the Lutherans set up a cry of 'Rome,
Rome.' Their stones began to fly at once, and, because they pressed so
closely in, the City bowmen had no room to string their bows. The
citizens struck out with their silvered staves, but the heavy armour
under their white surcoats hindered them. The Lutherans cried out
that the Kingdom of God was come on earth because a Queen from Cleves
was at hand.
An alderman's charger was struck by a stone. It broke loose and
crashed all foaming and furious through a tripe stall on which a
preacher was perched to hold forth. The riot began then. All in among
the winter trees the City men in their white and silver were fighting
with the Lutherans in their grey frieze. The citizens' hearts were
enraged because their famous Dominican preacher had been seized by the
Archbishop and spirited into Kent. They cried to each other to avenge
Dr. Latter on these lowsels.
Men struck out at all and sundry. A woman, covered to the face in a
fur hood and riding a grey mule, was hit on the arm by the
quarterstaff of a Protestant butcher from the Crays, because she wore
a crucifix round her neck. She covered her face and shrieked
lamentably. A man in green at the mule's head, on the other side,
sprang like a wild cat under the beast's neck. His face blazed white,
his teeth shone like a dog's, he screamed and struck his dagger
through the butcher's throat.
His motions were those of a mad beast; he stabbed the mule in the
shoulder to force it to plunge in the direction of the soldiers who
kept the little gate, before in the throng the butcher had reached the
ground. The woman was flogging at the mule with her reins. 'I have
killed 'un,' he shrieked.
He dived under the pikes of the soldiers and gripped the captain by
both shoulders. 'We be the cousins of the Duke of Norfolk,' he cried.
His square red beard trembled beneath his pallid face, and suddenly he
became speechless with rage.
Hands were already pulling the woman from her saddle, but the guards
held their pikes transversely against the faces of the nearest,
crushing in noses and sending sudden streaks of blood from jaws. The
uproar was like a hurricane and the woman's body, on high, swayed into
the little space that the soldiers held. She was crying with the pain
of her arm that she held with her other hand. Her cousin ran to her
and mumbled words of inarticulate tenderness, ending again in 'I have
killed 'un.'
The mob raged round them, but the soldiers stood firm enough. A
continual cry of 'Harlot, harlot,' went up. Stones were scarce on the
sward of the park, but a case bottle aimed at the woman alighted on
the ear of one of the guards. It burst in a foam of red, and he fell
beneath the belly of the mule with a dry grunt and the clang of iron.
The soldiers put down the points of their pikes and cleared more
ground. Men lay wallowing there when they retreated.
The man shouted at the captain: 'Can you clear us a way to yon
stairs?' and, at a shake of the head, 'Then let us enter this gate.'
The captain shook his head again.
'I am Thomas Culpepper. This is the Duke's niece, Kat,' the other
shouted.
The captain observed him stoically from over his thick and black
beard.
'The King's Highness is within this garden,' he said. He spoke to the
porter through the little niche at the wicket. A company of the City
soldiers, their wands beating like flails, cleared for a moment the
space in front of the guards.
Culpepper with the hilt of his sword was hammering at the studded
door. The captain caught him by the shoulder and sent him to stagger
against the mule's side. He was gasping and snatched at his hilt. His
bonnet had fallen off, his yellow hair was like a shock of wheat, and
his red beard flecked with foam that spattered from his mouth.
'I have killed one. I will kill thee,' he stuttered at the captain.
The woman caught him round the neck.
'Oh, be still,' she shrieked. 'Still. Calm. Y' kill me.' She clutched
him so closely that he was half throttled. The captain paced stoically
up and down before the gate.
'Madam,' he said, 'I have sent one hastening to his duke-ship.
Doubtless you shall enter.' He bent to pull the soldier from beneath
the mule's belly by one foot, and picking up his pike, leaned it
against the wall.
With his face pressed against his cousin's furred side, Thomas
Culpepper swore he would cut the man's throat.
'Aye, come back again,' he answered. 'They call me Sir Christopher
Aske.'
The red jerkins of the King's own guards came in a heavy mass round
the end of the wall amid shrieks and curses. Their pike-staves rose
rhythmically and fell with dull thuds; with their clumsy gloved hands
they caught at throats, and they threw dazed men and women into the
space that they had cleared before the wall. There armourers were
ready, with handcuffs and leg-chains hanging like necklaces round
their shoulders.
The door in the wall opened silently, the porter called through his
niche: 'These have leave to enter.' Thomas Culpepper shouted
'Coneycatcher' at the captain before he pulled the mule's head round.
The beast hung back on his hand, and he struck it on its closed eyes
in a tumult of violent rage. It stumbled heavily on the threshold, and
then darted forward so swiftly that he did not hear the direction of
the porter that they should turn only at the third alley.
Tall and frosted trees reached up into the dim skies, the deserted
avenues were shrouded in mist, and there was a dead and dripping
silence.
'Seven brawls y' have brought me into,' the woman's voice came from
under her hood, 'this weary journey.'
He ran to her stirrup and clutched her glove to his forehead. 'Y'ave
calmed me,' he said. 'Your voice shall ever calm me.'