Michael JECKS - The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker

It was good to beat Luke, though. They were enemies, and that was all there was to it. Luke and he had early on decided that they were rivals, and their enmity had been cemented when Luke had superciliously laughed at one of Henry’s pages of writing. Henry’s early attempts at writing had been more than a little inept, but that was no reason for the snotty bastard to laugh, although now he looked back on that moment with pleasure. Because he hadn’t been raised in the same strict manner as Luke, the moment he realised the other boy was making fun of his efforts, Henry had taken prompt action and swung his fists.

Luke had responded with gusto, seeing this as nothing more than a direct challenge to his position as undisputed leader of the Choristers. Both soon had bloody faces, Luke with a nastily bitten shoulder, bruised shins, and a nosebleed, while Henry had bruises all over his chest and upper legs. Their shirts and robes were badly ripped and an enraged Gervase called them in to explain their sudden ferocious battle. However, neither would account for it. It was too demeaning to confess. Luke had no intention of admitting that he had caused the fight by his sneering, and Henry refused to lose the moral high ground by sneaking on his peer, so both were held down and slapped across the backside by the Succentor with a stiffened leather strap.

In some cases Henry had known beatings to create a sense of mutual trust, but with Luke this didn’t happen. Luke knew himself to be superior, with the same fixed, ineffable certainty that told him that his father was in every way the moral, mental and social superior to Henry’s father, and that his mother was better in comparison to Henry’s. No discussion was needed. Luke knew himself to be the more worthy person in every way.

Such confidence niggled constantly at Henry. He felt it was his duty to break through the exterior of Luke’s pride and show him that he was wrong, that Henry was as important a boy. At first his sole means of doing so, in order to avoid a second thorough flogging, was to excel at all the tasks given to him.

He had enjoyed a measure of success. Somewhat to his own surprise, he found that he had a certain ability at reading, and the Latin he was given to learn soon held little mystery for him; in a little under a year he was better at reading and speaking Latin than Luke. Yet no matter how hard he worked, he could not make much headway with his writing or painting. His fingers failed him when he picked up a reed and tried to form perfect, precise circles and straight lines. The effort involved seemed too great. It was pointless: it wasn’t as if Henry really needed to know how to write. When he was no longer a Chorister, he would go back to Thorverton to help his mother look after their property. Writing wouldn’t be much use then.

At Luke’s desk he gazed down critically. His rival had drawn some pictures of peasants working in a field. It wasn’t bad, either, Henry thought privately. Women threshed grain from their long stems, a shepherd with his dog drove a flock towards a pen, young boys pulled on a string to trip a fine net trap, catching a pair of songbirds. All as it should be.

Henry leaned closer. The colours were very good, the reds and blues of the tunics looking just like real cloth. Luke had coloured the lettering all in gold, and it fairly glowed on the page. It was entrancing. Henry wished he could draw and paint like that. But he couldn’t.

Walking back to his own desk, he looked down without interest. There was something missing, he could tell, but he couldn’t be bothered to see what it was. He’d already got what he wanted, the boy-Bishopric: both for his mother, and to slight Luke.

As the thought struck him, the door opened and Luke himself walked in. He cast a contemptuous look at Henry, then crossed to his desk, pulling a bundle concealed beneath it. Henry tried not to look interested, but he couldn’t help squinting sideways to see what it could be. Luke obviously knew he was intrigued, but shoved the thing under his coat and gazed at Henry as if daring him to make a comment; it was unnecessary because Henry refused to look up. He sat doodling idly until he heard the door slam behind Luke.

He couldn’t go and look at the other boy’s desk, since Luke might return at any moment. So instead, Henry reached for his little pot of yellow colouring to touch up some of his lettering, only to see that it was gone.

‘Oi, who’s swiped that?’

Jen hurried along the streets with her coat gripped tightly about her to protect her from the cold. At the Fissand Gate she entered the Cathedral precinct and stared about her. There were still some people milling around, but what with the freezing weather and temptations available in taverns and alehouses all over the city, most had gone. Even the clerics were mostly indoors.

She chewed at her lip. The only consolation was that if he had been found here, there would be bound to be more men, all chattering and laughing at the capture of the famed outlaw. Even if they hadn’t caught him, people would be standing around discussing how they had just missed him.

Turning, she fled through the gates and sought out his favourite taverns. There was a hot, stinging sensation at her eyes as she ran. The fear that Sir Thomas might be in danger was enough to set a panicky urgency thrilling through her veins. Since Hamond’s death he seemed to have lost his fear of capture.

She had got to know him so long ago, soon after her mother had died so horribly, fainting over her fire and burning to death. Father was wasting away to nothing, as were all the other people in the vill. Afterwards Jen promised herself she would never again suffer from a lack of food. To be without money was one thing, but to die the lingering death of starvation was hideous. Jen could feel herself fading away, sinking into a lassitude like her mother, with bleeding gums and loose teeth as scurvy attacked her undernourished body.

It was Sir Thomas who had fed her. He had come across her one day before her father died, when she was desperately looking for bird’s eggs in the soggy hedge just as another downpour drenched her. Past caring, she scarcely noticed that a rider was approaching, but when she heard the hooves, she glanced over her shoulder at him.

It was enough. Within a day she was sleeping in his bed, a fifteen-year-old girl with a knight who had been entranced by her. When her father died, she had begged room for herself and her brother, and Sir Thomas had agreed. He didn’t need to. She owed him a large debt for that reason. When he lost his manor he offered her freedom, but she refused it. Where else could she go? She had remained his lover and he had repaid her by feeding and protecting her and Hob.

She had to protect him now, in her turn.

It would not be easy. He had a great sense of debt to the men who had remained with him after he lost his manor, and Hamond was one of his longest-serving men. The dead clerk and Karvinel had confirmed that Hamond had been in the gang that attacked them south of Exeter on their way back from Topsham. The knowledge that Hamond had been killed on the man’s word had sent Sir Thomas into a cold rage at first, swearing that he would avenge his man, but then, later, he had taken Jen to his bed filled with a languishing sadness.

‘He’s gone; my lad is dead, hanging from a gibbet, for all the citizens of Exeter to point and laugh while he swings. It’s terrible. And he was nowhere near the robbery.’

She had soothed him, rocking him as he lay upon her breast, gentling him as she might their child one day if she ever conceived, and at last he succumbed to sleep, but he wouldn’t be able to forget that his man had died in that demeaning manner. He could never forgive the city, and especially not the merchant who had condemned Hamond. He wanted his vengeance, and he would have it.