ND no word o' this matter to King or common man till thou 'rt bid," admonished Wat Tyler when he bade Calote good-by next day. “If thou keep faith, haply I 'll believe thou art not all blab.”
“Likewise, leave thy father in peace,” counselled Jack Straw. “Thou 'lt not be the first maid that slipped out when the door was on the latch: there be not many go on so honest errand.”
“An thou wert my father, I might do so,” answered Calote. “But thank God for that thou 'rt not!”
“Amen!” said Jack Straw with a grin.
Yet was there little need to warn Calote of her tongue at that time, for a many days were gone by, and months even, before she again saw Stephen or the King. And meanwhile John Wyclif came up to London, and his name was in every man's mouth. Some said his doctrine was heresies, and others believed on what they could understand, which was much or little according as they had wit. But whether they believed on Wyclif or no, there were few men at that day in England who spoke a good word for the Pope. And although the little King Richard was a pious child, and so continued till his life's end, and a right faithful violent persecutor of heretics, yet did he not scruple—or his counsellors did not for him—to require of John Wyclif to prove to the nobles and commons of England—which they needed no proof, being convinced afore—that they ought not to send money and tribute to the Pope, when England was in sore straits for to meet her own taxes, and charity begins at home. And this was a scandal, because Wyclif was then under the Pope's ban; so it was sin for any man to crave his counsel. But of how he played prisoner in Oxford in the midst of his scholars that loved him; and how he came to Lambeth Palace and stood before Simon Sudbury the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Courtenay the Bishop of London, to make his defence; and how the Queen-Mother sent a message so that they feared to do him any hurt,—this Book needeth not to tell, save and to say that time passed. And Will Langland copied his Vision and sang his Masses for the dead, and Calote, his daughter, spun, and wove, and baked, and watched, and waited. Stephen came no more to hear Mass in St. Paul's, and the King was kept close.
“He will forget,” she said to herself after a long while; “he will forget, and there will be none to learn him more, for Stephen will forget likewise. Why should Stephen remember? Why—should Stephen—remember? He hath forgot already, and 't is all come to naught.”
Ofttimes she would go out of the Aldersgate into Smithfield and stand beneath the shadow of St. Bartholomew's wall, and wait, and remember how he had knelt and kissed the hem of her russet gown.
So the winter passed, and the spring, and summer was come. And Calote lay in her bed on Midsummer Eve and heard the merrymakers singing in the street, and thought of other Junes: thought of the day the Black Prince died, and Stephen said he would he were her squire; of the day when she was sent for to the palace, and she sat on a cushion by Richard's side and told him of the poor.
“June is a fateful month for me,” she said.