Fifty yards away, John Ball, mounted on a barrel, was preaching to the people. The crowd was very silent, and his voice came to her with the sound of bells ringing in the distance. She saw his arms waving exultantly as he flared like a torch burning in a wind. Hundreds of intent, hairy, and fresh-coloured faces looked up at him, open-mouthed, with eyes that glittered. And away yonder lay the great city, dim in the yellow light, like a dream on the uttermost edge of sleep. Isoult heard a man’s laughter, and, turning about, saw a face with a forked red beard look at her over the tailboard of the wagon. It was Guy the Stallion, gorgeous in a red camlet coat with a silver baldric over his shoulder, his bassinet polished till the pits of rust had been rubbed away. He rested his elbows on the tailboard of the wagon, and cleaning his teeth with the point of his tongue, stared at Isoult with an insolent relish that made his red-brown eyes look like points of hot metal. “Ha, Madame Isoult, it has been a great day, surely!” She felt all her pent-up scorn flash up at the sight of this absurd boaster’s arrogant face. “A great day indeed for the cattle who go to the shambles.” He opened his mouth wide and cawed like a bird. “Tell me, fair one, where now is the gentleman? Our great barons have fled out of the kingdom, to make war on Spaniards, since it is safer. We shall march down yonder, and eat up all the King’s creatures, all the fat merchants and clerks and moneylenders. John Ball will be our archbishop, Wat our Lord Marshal, Merlin our Chief Councillor.” “And you, Master Chanticleer?” He spread his shoulders. “I shall be a great captain. I shall march to and fro, hanging the gentry and storming their castles. I have seen more war than any lord in England. Yes, I shall be a great captain, with ten thousand bows and bills at my back.” The fellow might be contemptible, but it was such as he that led the Blatant Beast by the nose, and it is always possible to learn something, even from a Welshman with a red beard. “Will it be so easy to eat up all the nobles and their people?” He was very ready to prove to her how the kingdom would be won. “See now, how can one knight in full harness fight a hundred ploughmen? Why, they have only to tumble him over, and beat him with hammers like any old pot. I know what I am saying; the lord on the high horse is only good to fight his peers. We have only to hamstring their horses, pull them down like big beetles, and then use the knife. I have seen it done in the French wars. Besides, half the lords are out of the country, and the rest shivering in their skins. The King’s but a boy, and most of the Londoners are with us. The whole country’s up, and we mean to have the King in our hands and to use him. By cock, what can a few hundred lobsters in steel coats do against so many?”