Knollys took a light and went above to a little room under the tiles, where Fulk was lodged now that Richard the King was King again. Isoult slept with the Princess’s women. Knollys had to hammer lustily on the door, before Fulk, wrapped in his surcoat, let him in. “You sleep as well as you face a mob, my son. Shut the door. I have much to say.” “More rebels to fool?” “No, a much grimmer business. The King’s Council has most solemnly decreed that you shall grow a beard.” CHAPTER XXVII It was a grey dawn, because of the mist on the river, with a promise of heat and of a cloudless sky. On London Bridge the houses looked as though they were smothered in white smoke, and the river went gliding stealthily with hardly a ripple against the piers. A great, straw-coloured sun hung blurred in the east, and when some bell tolled the sound was heavy and distant. Grey, too, was the friar who sat on a wooden bench against the wall of a house and waited for the gate of the bridge to open. The friar’s cowl was drawn down over his face; his beads hung in a brown loop, and his hands played with them restlessly—hands with big knuckles, and black hair spreading from the wrists. Sometimes he threw his head back and looked at the battlements of the Bridge Gate. There were two heads up yonder, stuck upon spikes, and Merlin had seen them outlined against the sky when the dawn was breaking—two round, black shapes, sinister and stiff. And now that the day had dawned, he looked up at the two heads, with their ragged necks, the heads of John Ball and of Jack Straw. Merlin’s eyes were red, but not with weeping. A ferocious, grinning scorn betrayed itself as he stared at the head of the Priest of Kent. He had not loved John Ball, because John Ball had been too much loved by the people. He began to talk to the head ironically, yet with arrogance. “Come, good Jack, what dreams dreamest thou up yonder? That tongue of thine will turn to leather, and thy head grow brown like a rotten apple. And thou hast never loved a woman! What hast thou to boast of? What hast thou enjoyed? They deserted thee and ran—thy brave children, thou friend of the poor, thou father of rats! The poor!” He struck his chest with his fist. “We have been fooled, but Merlin’s head is on his shoulders. I have a game to play. They would have stuck my head up yonder had I not gone about boldly and not slunk in a cellar. The grey frock serves.” He stared at Jack Straw. “Prithee, Jack, didst thou not desire Isoult? Fool, where is thy body now? But Merlin lives; he will strike and he will love. Courage! It is good to lie in a great lord’s pocket. Put no faith in the poor.”