Isoult had no smiles for the crowd, but her partner was in royal fettle. The red tusks of his beard bristled with arrogance, and he turned his head from side to side like a haughty and staring puppet. Now and again he presented his poleaxe, which served as a sceptre, for the crowd to kiss, nodding his head at them and declaiming his titles.
“By cock, I am King Jack—King of the Commons! Let the lords and gentles shrive themselves, for assuredly I shall crack their skulls. I am King Jack, the King of all honest fellows.”
They went at a snail’s pace over the bridge. The roadway between the houses with their painted signs and plaster work and their carved, overhanging gables, shook with the tramp of feet. The bowmen put their caps on their bows and shouted together, and from the boats on the river came the braying of trumpets and the beating of drums.
Isoult’s heart was out of the crowd. She was conscious of scorn, of an utter lack of kinship with these rustics who crowded in their thousands over the bridge. The walls of the White Tower rose against the blue, speaking to the pride in her, a pride that had blood in the mortar between its stones. Yet she owned to a vague curiosity, a desire to foresee the end of all this storm and bluster. Was it possible that her own perverse but discarded dreams were to come true, that she was to behold King Jack crowned and throned on the seats of the mighty? She felt someone nudging her, and found the swashbuckler thrusting at her with the handle of his poleaxe.
“Look alive, wife; grin at them, bob your head. By cock, we are very great people, you and I!”
Certainly his greatness had expanded. His eyes flared, and his beard looked even redder than usual. The allegory had got into his head.
“You are fine enough to serve for both!”
“What, no heart for adventure? We are great people, I say. Listen to the bells, and the drums, and the fine bellowing voices.”
“They bellow loud enough, even for your fancy.”
“Well, Queen Jill, I shall sit in the King’s chair at Westminster. But spur and saddle’s the word, when we have done with all this mummery. We’ll show these lordings how to handle a spear.”