The Oath

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Second Sunday after the Feast of St Martin[48]

Outside Hereford

Robert Vyke dropped a crust of bread for Wolf as the great mastiff lumbered along beside him, and when he looked up, he saw Otho and Herv riding nearby.

‘Not far now,’ Otho muttered. He was not comfortable on horseback, and his body lurched from side to side in the saddle.

Robert Vyke smiled, but his heart was not in it. There was no telling what would happen to him when they arrived. When captured, if you were rich and important, you would be ransomed and your life saved; but if you were a simple peasant from another lord’s host, you ran the risk of being slain out of hand. He had a nasty suspicion that his own fate could follow that path.

‘You look like you’ve swallowed a wasp,’ Otho said after contemplating him for a moment or two. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. I just don’t want to get to Hereford that soon.’

‘Your leg all right?’

‘Yes. It’s no trouble now,’ he said, flexing it to show.

‘You’ll live.’

Robert Vyke shot him a look. ‘What?’

Otho shrugged. ‘Your leg, I meant. Why?’

‘What’s the chance of me living, though? They will want to make a show of those who supported the King, won’t they? And I was with him when our master went over to the Queen. I’m a traitor to my own master.’

‘You didn’t do that on purpose,’ Herv objected.

‘Doesn’t matter, does it? Not to a knight or a lord. They just look at me and see a peasant who can’t be trusted.’

Otho sucked at his front teeth. ‘I think you’re missing something here, Rob. If this was the other way round, and the King was waiting for you to be brought to him, maybe you’d be right. But I reckon the one who’s worried most now is that one there.’ He pointed at Despenser.

‘You really think so?’ asked Vyke, cheering up.

‘Yeah. He’s shit scared.’ Otho studied the man for a while, and then spat. ‘Nah, you’ll be fine Rob. They’ll hardly even notice you.’

Second Monday after the Feast of St Martin[49]

Hereford

They reached the city in the middle of the morning. Trotting down towards the gate, Baldwin saw a party of men riding out to meet them. If he could, he would have turned his horse and galloped away.

‘What is all that lot?’ Simon asked, gazing ahead with his eyes narrowed.

‘Looks like Sir Thomas Wake at the head,’ Baldwin said. ‘I know him – he’s a good man. The others, I don’t know.’

They were soon to find out. As their party reached the gates, there was a flurry of activity. Three men came and took hold of Despenser’s horse. He was forced to dismount, and while four men rode to the King and took him into the city at a brisk trot, Despenser had the tunic ripped from his back and chest, and was forced to stand still while a fresh tunic was placed over his head.

‘What’s that?’ Simon asked, peering. His eyes had not recovered their full vigour yet, and trying to focus from here was giving him a fresh headache.

‘They have made a tunic with his arms reversed,’ Baldwin said, his voice hushed. ‘His arms are destroyed.’

‘Oh?’ Simon said.

‘Yes. “Oh”. It means his place in the nobility will cease to exist,’ Baldwin said.

Simon nodded, and then, ‘What now?’

‘They are writing on him,’ Baldwin said. It was impossible to hear what was being said, but someone had tied his wrists, and now men with reeds and inks were scrawling all over Despenser’s back, sometimes straying onto his neck and bare shoulders, while the man stood whey-faced and uncommunicative. Around him was a growing crowd who taunted him and laughed. Then a crown of green nettles was brought and rammed on his head. That brought on a reaction: he writhed with pain as the stings burned his brow and temples.

He was not alone. Baldock also had his tunic cut from him, and naked, he was clothed in his own arms reversed, with his own crown of nettles shoved hard over his brow. Despenser’s herald, Simon of Reading, was given a banner, but he refused to accept it, his face showing his revulsion.

‘It’s got Despenser’s arms reversed, too,’ Baldwin answered before Simon could ask.

It did not work. Simon of Reading was forced to take up the banner, and then Despenser was given a miserable hack to ride into the town. It was mangy, thin and spavined, and looked as though it could scarcely bear his weight, but then Simon of Reading was beaten and prodded with swords until he led the way into the city, Baldock and Despenser following.

Simon and Baldwin could hear the crowds inside the city. There was jeering, cat-calling, and rotten fruit was thrown, and eggs, at the unfortunate trio. For the most part, when Baldwin caught glimpses of him, Despenser was sitting stiff-backed on his nag – oblivious, apparently, to the missiles and taunts.

There was a justifiable hatred of this man, but Baldwin felt alarmed at the way that the people of the town were responding to him, this despot who only weeks ago would have had them trembling with terror by merely looking at them. Now, in the hour of his downfall, they were happy to throw all caution to the winds and shame him for their pleasure. It was foul to witness, and Baldwin wondered if Mortimer realised that this crowd, which was learning to insult its betters with impunity, could all too easily turn on him as well, given the opportunity. To see women screeching abuse, their children joining in, and men with their faces twisted with loathing, was not an edifying sight.

They were taken to the market square. This was where judgement was to be declared.

The names of the judges were read. The Earl of Lancaster was there, and the Earl of Kent, and Thomas Wake, as well as the other man from the gate, Jean de Hainault, and, of course, Sir Roger Mortimer. Set slightly aside, sat Queen Isabella and her son, the Duke of Aquitaine.

Despenser was commanded to be silent. There was to be no defence to the clear and manifest crimes of which he was accused. No man was asked to speak for him, and instead a series of charges were read out to the suddenly quiet market square.

Baldwin found himself distracted by the gaily-coloured flags which fluttered about in the breeze. He thought how festive the square looked, as if it was a holiday, so wonderfully at odds with the terrible scene now playing out in front of him. The silence, apart from the wind and the voice relentlessly reading the charges, gave a feeling of unreality. Looking up, in a window in a tower overlooking the square, he saw a face wearing a rictus of perfect horror.

‘The King!’ he whispered.

King Edward II stared down at the square and felt his breast and belly melt in fear.

They wouldn’t, they couldn’t kill his Hugh, his lovely Hugh. The man was not guilty of these crimes they were inexorably listing. They were saying that Hugh had left Isabella, his Queen, alone at Tynemouth when the Scottish were attacking. That was unfair! Sir Hugh had tried to reach her, but he couldn’t because of the numbers of Scots in the area. And she had escaped anyway, climbing aboard a ship at the last minute. He craned to listen. What was that? That he had granted the Earldom of Winchester to his father? That wasn’t his doing, it was the King’s action! What now? That he had stopped the King from travelling to France to pay homage for Aquitaine, to the detriment of the kingdom? Ridiculous No! No! This was a travesty!

Down there in the square he could see poor Hugh, standing so still and calm, like a saint before his martyrdom. Like Christ Himself with his shameful crown while the hideous wretches all about him revelled in his pain.

Then the words he had been dreading came up to him. There was not even a pause to give the pretence that Sir Hugh was being judged. Instead, they went straight to the judgement from reading the list of charges. He was to be hanged, drawn, castrated, quartered, and his rank and nobility would die with him.

No, no, no, no…

Baldwin heard the last words: ‘Go to your fate, traitor, tyrant, renegade; go to your own justice, traitor, evil man, criminal!’

All Baldwin could see was the King’s face. The expression on his drawn features tore into the knight’s heart. He had sworn to aid Sir Hugh if the King could not, and now he was forced to witness and do nothing. It felt shameful.

Despenser was no longer a knight. Stripped of rank and chivalry, he was pushed and beaten to a sledge, where he was forced to lie, his hands tied to the topmost rail, and four horses dragged him over the cobbles, bumping and rattling, past people who spat and laughed at his anguish.

All were to follow. Baldwin was drawn along with the others as the crowd surged after him, and he noticed that guards were all watching him and the other men from the King’s last servants as though they were expected to launch themselves at Sir Hugh and Simon of Reading in an attempt to rescue them. There was no chance of that.

They went along the lanes, winding this way and that until they were by the castle walls.

Baldwin saw it all. Hugh was cut from the hurdle and stripped beside a fire, then with his hands still bound, he was helped up the ladder to the scaffold, the rope fitted about his neck, and hanged from a gallows high up until he was almost dead, face swollen, eyes popping, legs thrashing. When his struggling slowed, he was cut down and bound to a ladder. Water dashed in his face to revive him, and then he was castrated, the executioner throwing the offending parts into the flames, before slicing into his belly and, while Despenser’s mouth worked, the man dragged out his intestines, bundling them into a heap and burning them too.

There were taunts and laughter as the executioner reached in with his knife and cut out Despenser’s heart. When that too was on the fire, he took up a bright new cleaver to finish his butchery.

It was enough for Baldwin. This was bloody revenge, not justice. The entire realm wanted to know that Sir Hugh le Despenser was not merely dead, but defiled for all to see. His head would be sent to London, his quarters to major cities so that all would see the punishment meted out to those who sought to destabilise the kingdom. He felt sickened.

‘What of me?’ he said to Simon.

‘You won’t be harmed,’ Simon reassure him. ‘They have their figurehead. They don’t need you.’

Baldwin felt shaky and befouled, as though he had been an active participant, not a mere witness. This was too much like the deaths of so many of his friends in Paris and all over France: Templars who were tortured and then burned at the stake for refusing to confess to crimes they had not committed.

‘Poor England,’ was all he said.

Simon managed to force a way through the press as people edged closer to the guards standing with polearms held across their chests, keeping them all back as the executioner continued his grisly work. His cleaver could be heard clearly, each blow striking wetly as it sheared through bone. Simon of Reading was already dangling limply from a rope, the life throttled from him, but Baldock had been rescued and whisked away. Some weeks afterwards, Simon heard that it was Bishop Orleton who rescued him, only to have him gaoled later for his ‘offences’. But the London mob would later find him and drag him from his gaol cell to murder him in the street.

Baldwin walked away with Simon, still feeling that strange sensation, as though his soul was separating from his body. ‘I do not know what is to happen to me,’ he said, when they were some distance from the execution. He felt a total alienation from the world, as though he was merely waiting in a queue for the executioner to take him in his turn.

‘Baldwin, you are safe.’

The knight ignored him, saying, ‘There was no need to kill Reading. You saw him hang just now, Simon. Why?’

‘He was too close to Despenser,’ Simon said. ‘I’ve heard he was insulting to the Queen, too. I think she wanted her revenge.’

‘Perhaps,’ Baldwin said wearily. ‘Perhaps so.’

‘Come, my friend, you need a good jug of wine, and so do I.’

‘I rather think that this once, a pint of wine would be an excellent idea,’ Baldwin admitted.

Soon they were standing in a loud chamber with a jug each, trying to avoid being jostled by the happy revellers who were celebrating the death of a tyrant.

Simon and Baldwin drank in silence. Baldwin was moody, not at all himself. In all the years Simon had known him, Baldwin had never been morose, but today he seemed to have convinced himself that he was shortly to be arrested and killed.

To try to draw him from the bleak shell into which he had retreated, Simon began to tell him of Cecily and the murder of the Capon family by Squire William. It was not, perhaps, the happiest of tales, but there was one message that Simon thought relevant for his friend.

‘So the Squire received a pardon, as did his men,’ he finished at last.

‘Only to die at the hands of a village priest,’ Baldwin noted.

‘But they were able to return to their homes,’ Simon pointed out. ‘And so will you.’

Robert Vyke had felt a profound terror strike him at the sight of the man’s butchered quarters. The naked body had been manhandled like a hog’s, the eviscerated torso separated from the hips, then held up and accurately separated with a series of blows straight down the middle of the spine; and finally the legs were separated by five firm cuts at the groin which slashed through the bone with ease. The pieces were all to be left in tar to seal them so that they would survive for years on display.

It was enough to turn a man’s stomach, to see such brutality.

‘Will they do that to me?’ he asked in a whimper.

‘Why’d they make the effort?’ Otho said, but Robert scarcely heard his joke.

‘They’re going to do him next, aren’t they?’ he said fearfully, pointing to the body swinging overhead. Simon of Reading’s face was a purple mask, and the rope was stained red where his fingernails had tried to pull it from his neck as he rose in the air.

‘Nah,’ Otho said, and spat into the road. ‘He’s already dead. No point. Anyway, he’s not important enough. You got any idea how much it costs to get an executioner to joint a man? It don’t come cheap.’

‘What will they do to us, then?’ Robert shuddered.

‘Probably forget you exist,’ Otho said patiently. ‘Look, that sort of death is for the nobles and high-born. Not for the likes of you and me, Rob. Now, I’d suggest you stay with me and Herv for the next few days. We’ll look after you.’

‘How can you?’

‘By saying you’ve been with us all this while. Right?’

‘What, pretend I wasn’t there?’

‘Who will say you were?’

‘There were all the knights… the king… Despenser…’

‘The knights, believe me, have more to think about than whether you were there with them or not. The King’s off tomorrow, so I’ve heard. They’re going to take him somewhere else so he can’t escape. And the Despenser’s not really a problem to you now, is he?’

‘What about the others, though? I can’t just walk away.’

‘Course you can! No one’s holding you, Rob. Wake up, man! You’ve been with me and Herv all the while, right? All the way from Bristol.’

Robert nodded, and would have felt reassured, but for the man who at that moment turned and recognised him.

‘Why, if it isn’t the injured messenger – the man we sent to the King. Have you only just returned, then?’

‘Sir Stephen,’ Robert said, his heart sinking to his shabby leathern boots.