Walworth parleyed with the crowd, and rode straight to the Tower, where the Council was sitting without the King. Walworth’s news was desperate news, nor could he promise much for the goodwill of the city. The wealthier guilds might muster some eight thousand armed men, counting prentices and servants; Sir Robert Knollys had his six score men-at-arms, quartered about his lodging; Sir Perducas d’Albreth had some fifty more. There were in the Tower with the King his two maternal brothers, the Earls of Salisbury, Suffolk, and Warwick, the Grand Prior of the Templars, Sir Robert de Namur, the Lord of Vertain, Sir Henry de Sanselles, and a number of knights, squires, and yeomen. The Kent and Sussex rebels could count on the great mass of the common people within the city, and the easterlings and the midlanders were on the march. Walworth shrugged his shoulders and spoke of opening the gates. “I tell you, sirs, there is nothing for it but to keep these gentry in a good temper. The King alone can shepherd them. They will listen to no one else. Yet if they are met bravely and with fair words——” The lords looked at each other across the council table. It was as though Walworth mocked them, bidding them send out a white pigeon to coo to all these ravens. There was some quarrelling before the Council broke up, having come to no judgment in the matter; but Salisbury and Knollys drew Walworth aside and spoke with him apart in a window. Warwick and the archbishop joined them, and they debated for a long while in undertones. It was Salisbury who pressed the issue. “Walworth speaks the truth. We are in the last ditch, sirs, and something must be risked by desperate men. Let Knollys bring this marvel in.” “But the Princess? Is she the lady to suffer her son——?” “Let us all go to her together. She is a woman of sense and spirit. Come, gentlemen; we have no time to lose.” This “woman of sense and spirit” heard them with so much patience that Knollys rode to his lodgings as dusk fell, and climbed the stairs to Fulk’s attic. The last edge of a red sunset showed through the window, and Fulk was standing and leaning his arms on the sill. For days he had been cooped up in this upper room, seeing no one but Knollys’ old squire and trusted comrade in arms, who brought him food and drink, and stared him in the face as though he were Edward the Black Prince risen from the dead. For hours together Fulk had stood at the window watching the smoke rising, the pigeons on the roofs, and the swifts circling high above the steeples whose vanes glittered in the sunlight. Isoult’s beauty was still burning in him, making his restlessness a consuming fire. He turned sharply as Knollys entered, and his profile showed clear against the sunset. The very cock of his head was for adventure. Knollys closed the door. He had a green cloak and hood, and a grey scarf over his right arm. “The King behind the King!” He gave a short laugh and tossed the things upon the bed.