Long Will Part 34

"If I wait, there shall be done me a great honour. The lord of the manor purposeth to make me his wife."

"Saint Christopher!" cried the peddler, and turned in haste to the shepherd: "Diggon, dear brother; fare thee well! This is m-my lady; I must follow her."

"Hail, maiden!" said Diggon. "Art thou Mercy, or Truth, or Peace, or Rightwisnesse?"

"None of these,--but handmaid to Truth," the peddler answered for her; and when he had kissed Diggon he took Calote by the hand and led her away. And Diggon was left by the fire with the new-born lamb.

"T-tell me!" the peddler questioned after a little.

So she told him all, and at the end of the tale she said:--

"Natheless, 't is not for his wooing that I 'm ashamed and weary; but they laughed at the Vision. They laughed!--They thought 't was all a j.a.pe. Wherefore should they fear the peasants,--the poor rude men,--wherefore should any fear such simple folk? Who is 't knoweth better than I how weak Piers Ploughman is? Were I a lady, with the poor fawning about my heel,--and one sang that these should deliver the land, I 'd laugh too. They 'll fail--Dost thou not know they 'll fail? Ah, woe,--alas!"

"R-Roland of Roncesvalles, though he lost, yet did he win," said the peddler. "Jesus Christ d-died on cross. Hearken to the Vision:--

'After sharp showers, quoth Peace, most glorious is the sun; Is no weather warmer than after watery clouds.

Ne no love dearer, nor dearer friends, Than after war and woe when Love and Peace be masters Was never war in this world, nor wickedness so keen, That Love, an him list, might not bring it to laughter, And Peace through patience all perils stopped.'"

CHAPTER VIII

The Believers

Out of a lonely land of moor and fen and scattered shepherds, Calote came down into the stir and bustle of the eastern counties. Almost, she had come to believe there were no men in England, but two or three; so, for a little, her heart was lifted up when she saw the villages set so close as to join hands and kiss; when she saw the high road and the lanes alive with wayfarers; when she saw men in every field,--idle men for the most part. Yet was her joy soon turned to terror.

If the folk of the north were slow to kindle and loth to learn, 't was not so with them of Norfolk and Suffolk and Cambridges.h.i.+re. These men were John Ball's men, and Wat Tyler's, and Jack Straw's. Already they had their lesson by heart. Nevertheless, to Calote's thinking, they had not learned it aright.

"Ah, woe! better the sloth and dulness of west and north than this quick hate," she sighed to the peddler. "There 's murder in these hearts."

And this was true.

One day, when she was preaching Piers Ploughman to a great crowd, and how he set straight the kingdom and gave each man work to do and bade the wasters go hungry,--and all that company of an hundred and more men and women stood about, chaunting the words of the Vision till the roar of it might be heard half a mile,--there came by a man-of-law on a hackney, was seen of those that stood at the edge of the throng. He set spurs to his horse, but to no purpose; all that rout was upon him.

They beat him, and tore his clothes into ribands. His ink-horn they emptied on his head, and made of his saddle-bags and parchments a very stinking bonfire. And all the while they shrieked: "Thou wilt write us in bondage, wilt thou?"--"We be slaves, be we, bound to the soil?"--"Slit 's lying tongue!"--"Pluck out 's eyes!"

After a little while they left him half dead, and Calote wiped his b.l.o.o.d.y face, and the peddler caught his horse and set him on it. Then came the sheriff and his men that way and set Calote and the peddler in the stocks, for that they had gathered the people together and made a tumult. But the people hewed the stocks to splinters so soon as the sheriff's back was turned.

Another day, by the side of a pond, they came upon a rabble that ducked a monk of Bury, and but that Calote sounded her horn and so drew the mischievous folk to listen to her message, the unhappy monk had surely come to his death.

Once, when a certain lord was away from his manor, Calote was by when the lord's people burned his ricks. This was in the night, and all the villeins made a ring about the fire and danced, and sang:--

"'When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?'"

Neither did the bailiff dare come forth of the house to check them, for that they said they would cast him into the fire. And so they would.

The leader of all these Norfolk and Suffolk men was one John Wrawe, and when he heard Calote was come into the country he went to meet her and made much of her, and took her to this town and that, to blow her horn and speak her message. Old women that had seen the plague of '49 came out of their cots to kiss her hand and call her to deliver them.

Young mothers held their babes before her face and bade her free them.

Here and there, a knight that was for the people, but not yet openly, took her into his house, as Sir Thomas Cornerd, and Richard Talmache de Bently, and Sir Roger Bacon, and she heard how well ordered was this plot.

"'T will be the signal when Parliament votes the new poll-tax," they said.

For that there must soon be another poll-tax all England was very sure.

"Let us home," said Calote. "Let us home and find Wat. They must not rise so soon. They are not ready; and 't is Wat can stop it; none other. To rise for vengeance' sake, and hate, and to pay a grudge,--ah, what a foul wrong is this!"

'T was an autumn evening when Calote and the peddler, footsore, sun-browned, in tatters, came through the Ald Gate into London. A-many men stood about in groups up and down the street, as men will stand in a marketplace to chaffer and wrangle and gossip; yet these stood silent. The street was a-flutter with much speaking, but no one spoke; the air p.r.i.c.ked. Now and again a man looked out of himself with a waiting gaze and the face of a sleep-walker. There was slow s.h.i.+fting of feet, sluggish moving to one side to let folk pa.s.s.

"How changed is London in two year!" Calote half whispered to her companion.

"He-here they are ready," said the peddler. "Th-they do but wait."

Presently they met Hobbe Smith, and he, when he saw Calote, grinned and capered, and cried out, "Ho, mistress!" very joyously. And then, "News?" Whereupon other heads were turned to look.

"I am come from Yorks.h.i.+re, down the east coast," said Calote. "At Norwich we have many friends. At Bury Saint Edmunds let the monks look to 't. At Cambridge and Saint Albans they wait the word."

"All this is known," answered Hobbe, and turned to walk with them.

"Tell me of my father," said Calote. "Is he well?"

"Yea, well. I cannot make out thy father; he 's a riddle. No man ought to be more rejoiced than he, of"--Hobbe left his sentence hanging and began a new one: "Yet he pulleth a long face."

"And my mother 's well?"

"Ay, Kitte 's well."

"And thou, Hobbe?"

He laughed and grew red. "I 'm married, mistress. Thou wert so long away. There 's a little Hobbe."

Then Calote laughed likewise, and seeing her mother down the street at their door, she began to run.

Kitte kissed her, and crushed her close, and at the last said:--

"How will thy father be rejoiced to know thee safe!" Then, "Who 's this?" quoth she; and there stood the peddler, waiting.

"'T is an honest man hath holpen me in many a sore strait, mother; cannot speak plain."

"So!" said Kitte, and continued to look at him over her daughter's head thoughtfully.

"G-give you good-even, m-mistress!" said the peddler.

"Good-even, friend!" said Kitte, and added in a voice a.s.sured and quiet: "I know thy face."

"H-haply," he answered, and albeit he knew that he was found out he did not turn away his eyes from hers.

"Come in, and sup," said she; "Will 's late;" and she laid her arm about the peddler's shoulder, and kissed his cheek.