The Queen shut her eyes and said her prayers, but her ladies popped head out of window, this side and that, and whispered, “What 's this to mean?”—and “Who 's yon?”—to Stephen and Calote.
So they came to the Bridge and the drawbridge, and were let pass. And now Calote and Long Will turned them to Cornhill; but Stephen went to the Tower with the Queen.
CHAPTER III
In the City
N the Thursday the peasants came into London. Mayor Walworth might not choose but yield when he saw how many were against him: aldermen, citizens, and prentices. Wherefore he sent word to Wat Tyler to come in with his men, if so be they would pay for bed and board, and do none harm to that great city of London which was pride and glory of all the English. And they came in by the Bridge and by Aldgate, a gaping rabble,—for the most of them knew not London nor any city, and these houses in rows, and Paul's Church, set them to stare. To these the prentices were joined, and every street and every lane in London ran a river of men. They filled the taverns. Dame Emma had no need to cry “Good wine!—Come dine!”—and she did not take keep if they paid or no. She clapped each on back, with “Welcome, brother!” And to them that were young she gave her lips with a smack.
There was set up in Cheapside a block to behead lawyers and all such as were enemy to the people, and there were a-many slain in this fashion, hastily, without shrift. Calote saw this block, and the bodies of men lying on heap; and the prentices played at foot-ball with the bloody heads. And Calote ran down Cornhill as she were mad, and burst into the cot to her father, where he sat a-copying Piers Ploughman. To him she told these horrors, and when she had made an end, he said:—
“Nay,—these be not brute beasts, but men, our brothers. This is the meaning of battle. Haply angels wage war and is no letting of blood; but not so men. Not yet.”
“'T is Hobbe is headsman,” sobbed Calote. “Oh, father,—Hobbe! And shouting a jest with every blow.”
“And thou and I, we know what a kindly man is this Hobbe; and if we know, doth not Christ Jesus know, who shall absolve him? Be sure, if the King's Son of Heaven hath given His work in hands of sinful men, He knoweth to make excuse.”