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 pricked. Now and again a man looked out of himself with a waiting gaze and the face of a sleep-walker. There was slow shifting of feet, sluggish moving to one side to let folk pass.
“How changed is London in two year!” Calote half whispered to her companion.