Before they had ridden another furlong, outlying scuds of the thundercloud came drifting towards them. Ragged knots of men streamed up with bows and bills in their hand, gathering before and behind the King’s company. Some walked close to his horse, and shouted at him insolently.
“Sir King, Wat our captain would speak with you.”
“What of the charters?”
“The charters—the charters!”
“Down with all lords and gentlemen.”
Then Smithfield opened before them, and those who rode in the King’s company saw the space black with a waiting multitude. It was a mute, formidable crowd; but when the white horse came into view, a slow, swelling roar went up, a sound like the rush of a flood-wake when a dam has broken.
Fulk’s lips grew thin, his nostrils dilated.
A knot of figures stood out some twenty paces in front of the main mass grouped behind Wat the Tiler, who was mounted on a black horse, and carried a naked sword over his shoulder. Behind him were John Ball, Jack Straw, and the rebel leaders, and with them Merlin, the grey friar, in a brown smock and a green hood and leggings of leather.
Fulk’s eyes were on Wat the Tiler, measuring the man with his bull’s throat and insolent eyes. Of a sudden there was a movement among the figures behind the man on the black horse. Someone was being pushed forward into the open.
It was Isoult, dressed in a russet cloak and a red hood. Fulk saw her, and for the moment his heart seemed to stand still within him. A man held her by the wrist and was pointing towards the King on the white horse, and the man was Father Merlin.