Mooncalf could only stand, trying to hide his fear. He wanted to catch the eye of Foulkes and Mistress Martha, but that was futile. Both young people were more concerned in comforting each other. The noise and clattering in the tavern was now loud and continuous. The Earthworms demanded and seized the key to each and every chamber including the strongrooms in the cellar. Thorne objected but the Earthworms threatened the terrified Eleanor, whilst assuring Thorne that his property was safe. Marcel intoned a psalm, whilst Brother Roger sat tapping his sandaled feet against the floor. The evening drew on. Mooncalf tried to make signs to Martha but she was imprisoned deep in her fears. The search continued and the Earthworms grew more aggressive, threatening Thorne with torture. At this Marcel sprung to his feet.
‘I am a cleric!’
‘You will be a dead one!’ the Raven retorted.
‘You-’ He broke off as one of the Earthworms burst into the refectory and whispered in his ear. Mooncalf felt a chill; the danger was deepening. The Raven walked to the door and shouted a question. The response he received silenced all clamour. Royal troops were fast approaching the tavern.
PART THREE
‘Lollard’: old Dutch word for a mutterer or stammerer.
Athelstan and Cranston had just finished their deliberations with the Fisher of Men when a breathless Grubcatcher, courier for his master, came slipping and slithering across the quayside. War barges were on the river, crammed with soldiery, all heading across to the deserted quayside near The Candle-Flame. Athelstan and Cranston hurried down to the Fisher of Men’s barge. Icthus agreed to transport them swiftly across the swell and they cast off. A mist had billowed in, thick and curling. Nevertheless, Athelstan glimpsed the war barges surging before them, all despatched from the Tower quayside and displaying the blue, scarlet and gold of the royal household. Trumpets bellowed and horns brayed, telling other craft to swiftly pull away. Athelstan sat under the awning and wondered what was happening.
‘You are well named,’ he whispered. ‘Candle-Flame – you certainly draw in all the moths of murder.’
Cranston, half asleep, stirred and asked him what he said. ‘Just a prayer, Sir John; as the pot stirs, this mess of trouble thickens.’
They disembarked at the quayside to find the royal standard had been set up on a war cart with Thibault, Lascelles and officers from the Tower. They all stood about in half armour beneath floating standards and fiercely burning torches.
‘Sir John,’ Thibault greeted them, ‘Brother Athelstan, we have the Earthworms trapped.’
‘How?’ Athelstan asked. ‘Why?’
‘I received information that the Upright Men were plotting to visit The Candle-Flame after dark to search for Marsen’s looted treasure.’
‘Who gave that to you?’ Athelstan turned his head against the stiffening breeze.
‘Does it matter? A written message left at the Guildhall. It was well scripted, the message stark and simple.’
‘I suppose,’ Athelstan declared, ‘it was delivered by a ragged urchin who promptly disappeared?’
Thibault made a face and turned away.
‘You have Hugh of Hornsey at St Erconwald’s?’ Lascelles declared. ‘If we cannot seize him …’
‘And you will not!’ Athelstan intervened sharply, half-listening to the sounds drifting across the Palisade; peering through the darkness he could make out the sinister outline of the Barbican.
‘We could at least question him,’ Lascelles insisted.
‘No, I shall do that,’ Athelstan retorted. ‘The law of sanctuary is quite explicit. No officer, and that includes Sir John, can approach the fugitive in sanctuary after the felon has grasped the horn of the altar. I, as the priest, however-’ Athelstan broke off at the clatter of armour. A serjeant-at-arms, face almost hidden by the broad nose guard of his helmet, came hurrying out of the gloom.
‘Master Thibault,’ he gasped, ‘we have despatched archers and men-at-arms but the enemy command all approaches to the tavern. We could attack or encircle them but, I suspect, their defence will be fierce.’
‘Or,’ Lascelles snapped, ‘we could wait for those troops crossing the bridge to approach the south side and seal it off.’
‘They will have to thread their way through the needle-thin lanes of Southwark,’ Cranston declared. ‘They will not be able to move swiftly.’
‘Try and encircle them now,’ Thibault ordered.
‘They will resist fiercely,’ Cranston urged. ‘They will know what you plan and be prepared.’
‘Sir John, I hear what you say but time is passing and we should attack now.’
The serjeant glanced at Cranston, who just turned away. The officer hurried back to his post. Thibault, Lascelles and their escort followed. Cranston seized Athelstan’s arm.
‘The Earthworms are more cunning than Thibault thinks. The south side of the tavern looks out over a maze of alleyways; it could take hours before reinforcements arrive. The Earthworms will plot to break out. All they have to do is run a few yards deep into the protection of a dark Southwark night. There will be …’ Cranston’s words were drowned by screams of pain shrilling through the night. Both Athelstan and Cranston hurried across the Palisade, past the Barbican to the place of battle. Thibault’s men had lit fires. Cranston cursed this as a mistake as they only provided light for the Earthworms hiding behind the different windows of the tavern; their archers had already loosed a shower of shafts and bolts. Many of the Earthworms were master bowmen who had served in the royal arrays in France and elsewhere. They rarely missed their mark. Already corpses littered the ground. The screams of the wounded echoed through the night; these did nothing to hide the deadly sound of arrows and quarrels whirling through the darkness. Thibault’s officers tried to rush a door only to be beaten back, whilst their attempt to encircle the tavern had been reduced to a creeping crawl. The rain of arrows increased, their speed and accuracy frightening. Cranston and Athelstan hid behind a cart, watching the deadly hail fall time and again.
‘They are going to break out,’ Cranston murmured. ‘They have increased the intensity to numb us. An old trick which rarely fails.’ The volleys of arrows abruptly ceased. Lascelles shouted the order to advance. A few hapless souls did only to be immediately cut down. Again the death-bearing silence, only this time Thibault’s men remained hidden, the cries of their wounded comrades pitiful to hear. Athelstan tried to crawl to the nearest stricken man but Cranston pulled him back.
‘For God’s sake, wait,’ he urged. The silence lengthened, broken only by the fading moans of wounded and dying men. A door to the tavern was suddenly flung open. Thorne, a white cloth in one hand, a crucifix in the other, came tentatively out.
‘They are gone!’ he cried. Thibault’s men rose, hurried into the tavern and out through the main doorway. There was no one. Cranston and Athelstan followed. Thorne explained how the Earthworms had begun to slip away whilst the others had gathered at certain windows in an ever-diminishing mass.
‘You are correct, Sir John. The enemy will now be deep in the warren of streets beyond,’ Lascelles muttered. ‘The reinforcements will not be needed.’
Athelstan wondered whether he should go back to minister to the wounded and the dying. He just felt so tired, bleakly exhausted, drained by the fury of battle which had closed about him like a veil. Voices shouted, pleaded and cried. Armour clattered. Torches flared. Thibault was shouting for a search to be made. The smell of fire smoke, horse dung and sweat heightened Athelstan’s awareness of those spiritual odours: hate, fear, pain and desperation. Thibault was furiously deep in conversation. Lascelles made to walk away when Athelstan heard the angry whirr of a crossbow bolt. Lascelles stopped, hands reaching out; one shoulder slightly drooped. He walked towards Athelstan, entering a pool of light. He was blinking then he gagged, swaying on his feet, staring down in surprise at the crossbow bolt embedded deep in the right side of his chest. Lascelles walked forward again only to stagger sideways and, in doing so, intercepted a second quarrel aimed for his master but now shielded by himself. The quarrel smashed Lascelles’ skull and he tipped forward. Athelstan, ignoring Cranston’s cries and the clash of kite shields as a ring of steel was thrown around Thibault, hurried to the fallen man. Lascelles, however, was past all caring, his face a mottled mask of bloody froth, red skin and broken bone. He lay twitching and trembling as Athelstan tried to give him what spiritual comfort he could. The friar tried to calm his pitching stomach, the evening cold freezing the sweat on his body, the stinking muck of the yard and, above all, his curdling rage as the sheer futility of it all racked both mind and body. Horsemen appeared, hooves clattering, their leader shouting about how he had taken two prisoners, captured them, hooded and visored, as they tried to hide in a nearby alleyway. Thibault, screaming at his men to find the archer who killed Lascelles, abruptly fell silent. Athelstan rose wearily to his feet. Cranston’s hissed curse warned him. He glanced to his right; the two prisoners, arms bound tightly, staggered into the light. Athelstan stared in horror as Pike and Watkin, their faces blackened, scraps of the masks still tangled in their greasy hair, were pushed forward to fall on their knees. Thibault swept through his escort and, before he could be stopped, punched both prisoners viciously in the face. He pointed to the poles jutting out above the entrance to the tavern.