“And I!”
“God keep the King!”
These things, and more after this same manner, the people said one to another in the way to Smithfield. By New Gate they went, and Moor Gate and Alders Gate, for this Smithfield was without the wall beyond Saint Bartholomew's; a market square, wherein butchers slaughtered their beef, a foul, ill-smelling place; and every man that went thither on that June day was in some kind a butcher, with hosen bespattered with blood, and brown patches dried on tabard and courtepy. Neither had they cleaned their knives and knotted bludgeons, but came as they were to Smithfield, dull-eyed with wine and sleep.
“What is to be the end?” they said; and there were some whispered: “'T were well if we had let be the Flemings”—
“Lay not that on us! 'T is the London men shall answer for 't.”
“I saw a-many men from Kent did”—
“Mark ye, brothers, 't is not the Flemings will undo us, but old Simon, the Archbishop. There was a foul deed.” So spake Hobbe the smith, and all they that heard him crossed themselves.
“Who saith we 're undone?” blustered a fellow out of Sussex. “Have we not the King's pardon, and villeinage is dead?”
Nevertheless, 't was a sober company choked the narrow streets and swayed about the gates pressing to Smithfield.
And now the King came forth from the Garde Robe, his white-lipped nobles with him, and rode through Temple Bar and along the Strand past Charing Cross and John of Gaunt's blackened palace to the Abbey at Westminster. Mayor Walworth was with the King, and Salisbury and Buckingham and the other nobles that had sheltered in the Tower, but they were not many, and they were very pale. Stephen walked with his hand on the King's bridle, and this was the last time he should do the King this service, but he was not aware, nor the King neither. Nevertheless, Stephen knew that he must one day reckon with the nobles; and if not with the nobles then with the peasants. Howbeit, in this hour he took no keep of his own soul and body, but pondered how the quarrel should end.