“My lords,” he said, and all they marvelled to hear his voice how it was assured,—“my lords, I am going forth on the morrow to have speech of my people;—to hear what it is they will have. Etienne saith they desire freedom and no more to be called villeins. My lords, I know what this is, to desire to be free. I and my people, we shall be free men on the morrow.”
There was silence throughout the chamber, and every eye was fixed on the King where he stood. Then Salisbury bent his gray head above the boy's white hand that lay clenched on the table.
“Sire,” he said, “if you can appease them by fair words and grant them what they wish, it will be so much the better; for should we begin what we cannot go through, we shall never be able to recover it. It will be all over with us and our heirs, and England will be a desert.”
“Give you good-night, my lords,” said Richard then. “I will go to the chapel to my prayers.”
CHAPTER V
Mile End
These were the peasants from Saint Catherine's Hill that clamored beneath the walls of the Tower in the dawn of the Friday morning. Stephen looked out on them from a window above the gate and was 'minded of the waters of the sea, how they lapped about the cliffs of Devon.
“John Ball greeteth you all,”
sang the men,—