Isoult returned to her own mute inner self, and left this stuffed figure and the crowd on the far edge of her consciousness. She saw things without seeing them, heard sounds without hearing them. Her thoughts were back in the forest with its green and secret ways, in the wild fern, in the singing of birds at dawn, in the smell of the torn blossom, in the strong arms of a man. She was weary of being tossed along on the foam of this mill-race. It would carry her under the wheel, no doubt, and leave her broken in the still waters of the days beyond. She tried to keep in the past and not to think of the future. What did anything matter, unless the strangest of strange things happened?
The day’s happenings were to be spread out before her like some pageant or wild miracle play, for the wagon went with the multitude, carried along by it like a barge on a muddy stream. The peasants poured through the city, past Paul’s, and through Ludgate towards John of Gaunt’s palace of the Savoy. This great and noble house was the first thing to feel the mob’s wrath, and since they could not lay hands on the master, they were determined to wreck his house instead.
The wagon was left standing in the street, and Isoult saw all that happened. King Jack had joined the crowd; but Merlin remained in the wagon, holding his emblem of justice. The mob broke down the gates of the Savoy, slew the porters, and threw their bodies out into the street. A torrent of fury poured through into the courtyard till the great palace was as crowded as a beehive, and the uproar within never ceased. Men began to straggle out, carrying in their arms all manner of rich gear, plate, and jewels, and beautiful hangings, tapestries, furniture, armour, glass cups, mazer bowls, salts, clothes, dorsers, chalices, gold candlesticks, caskets, and mosaics. Everything was hurled down in the street beside the wagon where Merlin sat, until there was a pyramid of tangled magnificence lying in the roadway. When they had emptied the palace Merlin stood at his full height and waved long arms.
“Destroy, destroy, let nothing be left!”
They fell upon the pile, crushing the jewels to powder with hammers, battering the cups into shapeless lumps, hacking the gold and silver dishes to pieces, tearing the silks, embroideries, and tapestries to ribbons. A hundred armourers might have been at work in the street, by the clangour of axes and hammers. The air was full of dust and of silken shreds floating iridescent in the sunlight. A red stream came trickling out of the gateway into the street, for the mob had rolled all the wine barrels into the courtyard and staved them in, letting muscadel and pyment and hypocrasse gush over the stones.
Merlin looked at Isoult with his ironical eyes.
“We trample pride into the dust, but we do not steal it. See now, what a watch-fire they are kindling.”
Blue ribbons of smoke were uncurling themselves from the windows, and in a few minutes it began to rise in black masses from the turrets and the great lantern of the hall. The mob had set the palace on fire, after hacking the wainscoting to pieces, and piling it up to make a blaze. The river of wine still ran through the gateway, soaking into the mass of gorgeous rubbish that had been trampled like litter in a cow-yard. As the windows reddened, the last of the mob came pouring out, sweating, shouting, exultant. Soon the heat became so great, and the smoke so thick, that Merlin’s wagon had to be dragged away, and the greater part of the multitude followed it back into the city.
The Hospital of St. John shared the fate of the palace of the Savoy, being sacked and set on fire. Merlin’s wagon rolled through the streets with wild faces round it. They passed John Ball running like a madman through West Cheap, waving a crucifix, and shouting, “Let Nineveh be destroyed!” All the shops were shut; a sudden terror had seized the city; the May Day mood of the morning had gone with the dew. The mob’s blood was up, and its head taking in strong drink, for the tavern keepers had to keep open house and dared not ask for payment. The houses of the wealthier citizens looked shut up and deserted, but through cracks in the shutters many an eye peered and men handled their weapons behind barred doors.
Isoult saw Richard Lyon, Wat the Tiler’s enemy, murdered in West Cheap. Later she saw Flemings dragged from their houses and butchered before their doors, their bodies hacked in pieces and thrown into the gutters. Very few Flemings escaped that day, for these men of Kent had no pity on them. The Lombards shared the fate of the Flemings. The mob had smelt and tasted blood, and its face became smeared and hideous.