I could bare hear him. People started to cry, to shout and wail. The knights banged on their shields until people began to quiet. “Good God,” I breathed.
“Your overlord will collect this tax from you,” he shouted. “And they will in turn pay that money to the Crown.”
He stepped off the platform and people’s voices began to rise, protesting and yelling and crying.
Two knights began to shuffle him out, around the people, paying no mind to the violence that were about to start. “Where are the nobles?” I asked Allan.
His shoulders lifted. “Not here.”
Someone threw something at one of the knights that were still standing by the well, and he rocked backward—it were a clod of dirt, and other than leaving a smear on his armor, it didn’t do any damage.
The knight beside him drew his sword and stepped into the crowd. The people parted, and a hush spread, making it loud and awful when someone screamed.
I pushed forward fast and hard, but the people were a solid mass, and I couldn’t get far before David grabbed me, hauling me back.
“Let me go!” I yelled at him. “Let me—”
David clapped his hand over my mouth. “You’re dead,” he told me. “Do not let yourself be blinded by the suffering of one person, my lady. You must think of the suffering of England itself.”
He swung me around so I couldn’t see, but people gasped as the screams changed to deep, awful sobs. I clawed at his hand on my mouth until he trapped my hands as well.
“Stop, my lady!” he growled.
“Please!” someone yelled, and I turned. There were a priest there, and he were ushering people to the church. “Please, let us turn to God!” he cried.
People moved. People started going into the church, quiet and frightened now, and I saw what had happened.
There were a young man lying in the dirt, blood pouring out of his throat still. A woman knelt over him, sobbing and rocking back and forth, and the knights just stood there, watching.
David’s arms loosened a little. “There’s nothing we can do. The boy is dead,” he said quiet.
Allan looked about. “We should go to the church,” he said.
“I could have helped him,” I told David.
Allan shook his head.
“You think I shouldn’t act for one boy?” I demanded. “You think that England is some higher thing? One life is England. Every life is England.” Shaking my head, I spat at his feet. “You didn’t choose England. You chose my life over his.”
“He was already dead—” Allan started, looking at the church as if staying out too long would hurt us.
“Yes,” David said. “I chose your life over his.”
I covered my face. “The people can’t survive this,” I told him. “They can’t pay a tax that high, not when they’re still starving from the last one.”
David met my eyes heavy. “And if they can’t, King Richard won’t survive either. And what will England be then?”
I shook my head. “Even if they pay the tax, royal knights can’t do this. They can’t just kill people in the name of the Crown.”
Allan looked frightened. “The Crown doesn’t stand for justice in England, my lady Princess?” he asked. “You’ve shocked me to my core.”
They nudged me toward the church, and I went, staring at the boy.
I hadn’t saved him. I couldn’t save him. And I didn’t know what were left for me if that were true.
Chapter 4
We stayed in the church with the people of Silchester all night long. The knights left when things were calm again, and the people sat together in the pews, crying, raging, sharing their stories of how they couldn’t possibly pay.
I wondered if this were what it had been like in Nottingham after I left, when John Little’s body lay bleeding in the courtyard. Were everyone shocked into stillness and silence, or were they wailing, unwilling to move from that spot?
David helped the priest to lift away some of the benches and make room for people to sleep, carrying whatever materials he could. Allan found some sort of instrument with strings and he were playing it with charm.
I sat in the corner, listening. I didn’t have anything to offer them. I didn’t know how to steal this tax for them. I didn’t know how to help.
If you embrace who you are, you might find a great many tools at your disposal. They had been some of Eleanor’s last words to me, and they haunted me.
If I were some strange version of a princess, would I have been able to stand up there and tell the knights to stop? Would they have listened?
It wouldn’t undo the tax, though, nor the fact that England needed Richard, if only to protect Her from Prince John. I wouldn’t change anything.
Besides—I were dead. I had to stay dead.
We left at first light, slipping from the town. A hush had come over them all, this sad kind of accepting. There weren’t no other choice; that had been made clear to them fast and swift. The boy’s blood were still in the dirt by the well, making it rich and black.
I wondered if John Little’s blood were still in the courtyard at Nottingham, staining the stones where Prince John had killed him to get to me.
There were more people on the road. Maybe they thought if they left their homes, if they traveled somewhere else, they could avoid the tax. Maybe they had somewhere safe to go, but it all felt desperate and sad.
We made Winchester late in the day, and city guards were turning people away at the road before they even got to the city gates. “No visitors!” they shouted. “No visitors!”