The third and busiest bridge was the main thoroughfare from the city of London.
The abbey and the palace were separated by a wide yard. Today it was seething with onlookers waiting for a glimpse of the King, as well as with the usual lawyers, clerks, couriers, parliamentary officials and servants. They in turn had attracted an army of pie and ale sellers, as well as jugglers, acrobats, card sharps and a muzzled bear on a chain that sat disconsolately outside a nearby tavern.
Hildegard was just making her way through this crowd after depositing her belongings in her chamber in the guest quarters when someone pushed a scrubby piece of parchment into her hand. By the time she looked down, noticed the unfamiliar seal and looked up again, the messenger had vanished.
She peered at the seal again. It looked vaguely like a mitre and a sword but was so smudged it was difficult to make out. She began to prise it off as she threaded her way across the yard. A single piece of much-rubbed parchment opened out to reveal a message written in black ink.
‘My dearly beloved lady mother,’
it began. ‘
It is with much pleasure and delight I inform you that I have the honour to accompany my liege lord His Grace the Bishop of Norwich to the opening of Parliament and am now lodged at his house in the city. However, I beg a boon and would do so in person and beseech you to meet me privily
at the church of All Hallows by the Tower after nones this day, when I may see your beloved face again.’
It was followed by a few more filial endearments and signed in her son’s name, Bertrand.
She felt her heart leap. Her dear boy, the beloved child of her youth, fifteen now, for the last five years a squire to the bishop’s captain of guards – it had been an age since she had held him in her arms. To his disappointment, he had been passed over as too young when the bishop made his recent ill-fated march into Flanders and been so utterly routed. Because of this the bishop’s temporalities had been withheld for a time – putting her son’s future in jeopardy – but the bishop was restored to favour, her son rejoined his retinue. And now he was close at hand.
She smiled as she put the note safely in her bag. He must have got one of the bishop’s clerks to pen it – either that or his handwriting was much improved since she had last seen it.
‘Still not showed his face!’ The porter was cheerful when she reappeared. ‘If King Richard hasn’t arrived from Eltham there’s a good reason for it.’ He had been jubilant when he had first signed her in, confident that today the King and Queen would put in an appearance, even though Parliament was not to open yet.
Hildegard made some non-committal remark as she passed.
He called after her. ‘It looks as if the French are going to be here before him. They’re running round like headless chickens in there.’
She turned back.
When he nodded towards the chapter house she asked, ‘Is there news, then?’
‘So they say. Some intelligence just come in. You should go across there if you want the latest.’ He was envious of her freedom, it seemed, and added, ‘I can’t get away from here until compline.’
‘I’ll see what I can find out then send someone to keep you informed, if you wish.’
‘Grand. Let’s hope it’s not a false dawn. Let ’em come!’
The crowds, those who could not get inside the building, now milled around the porch.
‘Is it true?’ she asked a couple of pilgrims leaning on their staves close by.
‘Invasion? It sounds like it.’
‘And where are the French supposed to be?’
‘Halfway up the Thames,’ one of the pilgrims said, smoothing his beard nervously with one hand.
‘They’ve been saying that since midsummer,’ Hildegard pointed out.
‘Yes, but our spies have been watching Sluys,’ the shorter of the two men replied. ‘They say it’s a forest of masts. You can walk half a mile out to sea by stepping from one deck to another. And now it’s moving this way.’
It was known by now that the French had paid the mercenaries in the Low Countries to bring their ships to Sluys to join the armada they were gathering. It was said that there were one thousand three hundred and eighty-seven, and that if you looked out to sea the masts were like a vast stretch of woodland floating on the water.
There were other stories as well, that the Constable
of France was having an enormous warship fitted out in Brittany, bigger than anything ever built, and that every ship from the port of Seville, right round to Prussia, had been bought by the French for their invasion fleet. No expense had been spared.
‘Every port has had its ships requisitioned,’ one of them told her now. ‘You name it, Bruges, Blankenberghe, Middleburg, right round to St Omer – and what do we have in all this?’
‘Calais,’ his companion chipped in.
‘And allies?’ The man gripped his stave more tightly. ‘Not one. We’re on our own.’
‘Backs against the wall.’
‘As usual.’
‘What’s going on inside the chapter house?’ Hildegard asked. She could not dispute their claims. England did stand alone except for the support of a handful of Welsh bowmen. Ranged against them was all the might of France, Spain, Scotland and Flanders under the Duke of Burgundy. The Queen’s brother, Wenceslas of Bohemia, the Holy Roman Emperor, offered no practical support either.
One of the pilgrims said, ‘They’re making an announcement soon but they won’t let us in for fear of people being crushed to death.’ He glanced at his companion and they both shrugged their shoulders.
The execution block on Tower Hill had a handful of well-armed guards posted beside it. They were bristling with weapons and eyed Hildegard and Thomas narrowly as they approached.
Aware of the bloody events that regularly took place
in the vicinity, the two of them were in a subdued frame of mind as they walked past on the way to All Hallows to meet Bertrand. It had taken an age to find a ferry willing to take her downriver to the Tower landing stage and then she had had to find Thomas in the rambling Cistercian headquarters, but she had not wanted to walk about alone with the city in such turmoil.
They were just discussing the invasion and the likelihood of London being under siege when they were alerted by the sound of running footsteps. A gang of youths appeared, soon filling the narrow street opposite the Tower and swarming towards the block. They were running in some kind of formation, military style, banging cudgels against their bucklers in an ominous rhythm. A little drum started up behind them with a rapid warlike beat, urging the gang to quicken its pace. A few dogs, growling and slavering, galloped at their heels. They avoided the armed men near the block and ran on with a look of grim purpose.
Hildegard and Thomas were about to cross the green when a second group appeared from one of the lanes on the other side. They too had a drum which was being beaten to a martial rhythm.
The first gang, in red and white livery, and the second, dressed in lovat green with black slashes on their sleeves, continued to sprint towards each other.
‘Apprentice boys,’ murmured Hildegard in alarm. ‘What are they up to?’
It was soon apparent. With wild shouts the two groups met head-on, wielding their cudgels and beginning to crack each others’ heads open. The first victim fell, blood
pouring from a wound above his eye, and Hildegard automatically made as if to help when Thomas gripped her by the arm.
‘Let’s get out of it! Look!’
He was pointing to a line of constables marching out of one of the side streets and as they watched others appeared from the alleys and lanes leading onto the green. Properly armed with swords and shields, most wore chain mail under their tunics, heads protected by steel bassinets. They were a disciplined force and quickly surrounded the green and everyone on it. The din of swords banging in unison against their shields drowned out the sound of the apprentices’ little drum. An armed man on horseback followed behind the biggest cohort as it came up the lane from beside the Tower.
Soon the lines of armed men began to close in. The apprentice boys, lashing out randomly to protect themselves, were being brought down with howls of pain. Blood began to slick the cobblestones. The apprentices slipped and fell under a hail of blows and the constables attacked the fallen with batons flying, pinning them to the ground. Hildegard cried out as mailed boots thudded into the boys’ ribs. The constables methodically set to work dealing out the same fate to everyone until, as at some prearranged plan, they began to close in on the two groups, meting out punishment indiscriminately as they went.
Thomas dragged Hildegard into the safety of an alley.
With the odds turned against them, the apprentices in green and black began to scatter. Some made a run for the same refuge where Thomas and Hildegard were sheltering
but the constables pursued them, cudgels, swords and batons flailing in every direction.
‘Stop! We are not of these people!’ shouted Thomas, trying to shield Hildegard from their blows as they charged into the alley.
‘Then get the fuck out of it!’ snarled one of the constables as he ran past.
‘Come on!’ Thomas gripped Hildegard by the sleeve and dragged her out onto the green again. ‘Run for it!’
Together they headed as fast as they could towards a street on the other side of the green, away from the main fight, but a line of constables appeared from one of the lanes. Behind them stood a reserve of a dozen more armed men.
‘Permit us to come through?’ Hildegard asked, throwing a glance over her shoulder at the battle as it spilt out of the alley and spread onto the green again. The apprentices seemed to be gaining the upper hand.
When she tried to push her way through the line she noticed that the constables had linked arms, barring the way like a Saxon shield wall, and when she asked again to be allowed through they stared past her without responding.
She called out to the man on horseback patrolling behind the lines but he ignored her and moved on, checking that the wall of men was firm.
‘This is ridiculous!’ Thomas argued with the constable standing nearest. ‘You can see by our garments we’re not apprentices. We’re monastics from the Abbey of Meaux.’
‘We don’t care if you’re monastics from bloody Jerusalem, you can’t come through, so piss off!’
‘By what right can you keep us kettled up here?’ Thomas demanded with unaccustomed force. ‘We are free citizens. We have a right to walk where we please.’
No one answered.
He glared. ‘Come on, Hildegard, let’s try further along.’
They began to pass down the line in the hope of finding a constable who looked more open to reason but they hadn’t gone far when Hildegard found herself whisked through an opening that suddenly appeared. It happened without warning so that she was out on the other side before she realised Thomas had not followed. The shield wall re-formed. ‘Thomas!’ she shouted, turning and trying to push her way back.
‘You’re wasting your time, lady,’ muttered one of the men.
She shook his arm. ‘He’s my priest! Let him through!’
By now the constables were beginning to tread forward, a pace at a time, moving inwards just as the first wave of constables had done earlier, converging on the two gangs and pushing Thomas and several other men who had been caught inside closer to the fighting.
‘Please!’ she shouted as they moved in.
‘You can find him later,’ she was told. ‘Nobody crosses the line.’
Thomas had been pushed into the thick of the conflict as everyone was forced into one brawling mass.
The same constable advised her to get along to the next street. ‘He’ll be sent along there.’
She didn’t believe him. It was chaos. There was no way Thomas would know to do that. And why would they let him out there instead of here? She saw the bloodstained
apprentices being kicked to the ground, the battle lines surging now this way, now that, heard the crack of clubs on the backs of unprotected heads, saw green and red liveries mixed together. The constables were protected by steel helmets, by chain mail, well armed. It was not an equal fight.
They must have had prior knowledge of the apprentices’ plans, she surmised, bewildered by the violence.
Reluctant to leave Thomas to his fate, she made her way into the next street as she had been advised, but it was the same: lines of constables, everyone inside one fixed battle zone.
Unsure what to do for the best, she turned down the hill towards All Hallows. Her fear now was that Bertrand might have become embroiled in the riot as well.
With the raucous shouts of the combatants in her ears she hurried down to find him.
It was an impressive church. Not for its size, nor even for its slender spire and wide porch, but for its sinister reputation.
It was where the victims of the axe were taken after judicial beheading on Tower Green. It was where prayers for their tormented souls could be offered up and their mutilated bodies laid to rest.