Michael JECKS - The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker

That was Jen’s greatest fear as she hurried along the streets. She was convinced that she would hear that the merchant had been struck down in the streets, stabbed and left dying, but fully able to point his finger at his assassin, the leader of the gang he said had attacked him and robbed him.

But her anxiety was misplaced. In the fifth tavern she entered, the Cock, she found Sir Thomas sitting at the back of a gloomy hall filled with smoke from the damp logs that the host had optimistically set in the central hearth.

He sat on a stool, a slumped, rather sad figure huddled in his cloak and gulping wine from a pint pot. Seeing her shadow, he started, then gave her a lopsided grin. ‘So, little lark. You’ve come to fetch me home, have you?’

‘I thought you had been killed. I thought you had stuck your dagger in him and been caught. Why didn’t you come straight back with Hob? You could have sent a message with him to stop me worrying.’

He took her hand and gently tugged her towards him, then pulled her onto his lap and rested his head upon her breast. ‘Because I saw this Karvinel in the crowd. Your brother pointed him out to me and I followed him home. I know where he lives. Then he went to an alehouse and I followed him again. I could have killed him there, Jen, if I’d wanted to. I could have slipped my blade between his shoulders and left him dead in the gutter. Easy. But before I kill him, I want to know why he did it.’

‘You left him and came here?’ she asked sarcastically.

‘No. After the tavern, he returned to his house where he collected his wife, and they went off to another house where there was a Christmas feast; I ate from the alms dish at the door to find out whose house it was. It is owned by Vincent le Berwe, the steward told me. He’s the City’s Receiver.’

‘Does that tell you something about Karvinel?’

‘No, nothing. I still don’t know why he had Hamond killed,’ Sir Thomas said. ‘But I will!’

Why had the bastard sent his fellow to the gallows? All that day, Sir Thomas had been with Hamond in the city. Hamond had walked with Sir Thomas to the city gate and waved him off only a half hour or so before Karvinel ran up to the city’s gate and pointed out Hamond as being a felon.

Not knowing was dreadful, but Sir Thomas would find out. A firm resolution filled him with the warm satisfaction of revenge to come. Yes. Sir Thomas would not let Karvinel get away with his crime. Sir Thomas was a knight and he demanded satisfaction from the mere merchant who had murdered his servant. That was what it was: murder by proxy. Karvinel was too cowardly to kill Hamond in a fair fight, so he sought Hamond’s death by deceit, telling people Hamond had robbed him. And then had Hamond executed by the city.

‘You could have been seen – been captured,’ Jen said fearfully.

‘Not today,’ he said. ‘No one is looking today.’ But his attention had already returned to Karvinel. As soon as he could, he would catch the shit and beat the truth out of him. Before killing him.

Adam saw Luke at the corner of the chorister’s block as he left the Cathedral, his box of candles in his hand.

It was chilly out in the open air again, and now, with the dusk giving way to full night, Adam was tired and cold. He gripped his box of candles to his chest as he hurried over the grass towards his chamber.

But the boy walking ahead of him was too tempting.

Adam had never liked Luke. Truth to tell, he hated the cocky little shite. He hated the way Luke always contrived to be smart and clean, the way he was always being commended for his efforts, the way the little brat accepted the compliments of Canons and clerks for the purity of his singing, like a little male whore with that smug, smarmy smile on his fat face.

It wasn’t so easy for the men about the place, Adam knew. He’d done everything in his power to learn the lessons he’d been given from the first day he entered the Choristers, but he’d failed. The letters moved on the page before his eyes, he couldn’t make head nor tail of them, and the pictures were as bad. What was a man supposed to do when the reed in his hand just didn’t work? He couldn’t help the fact that his sketches and drawings were smudged and out of proportion. And try as he might, he couldn’t make the scenes he drew look neat. Where others formed pretty little pictures with balance and elegance, his ended up as the worst of cartoons, with men and women looking sharp-faced, bestial.

His time here must be drawing to an end soon. He couldn’t remain with any likelihood of preferment. The Canons would grumble, asking that someone else be brought in to take the spare place, someone who would be of more direct and immediate use to the Cathedral. Perhaps he’d be lucky, get offered a post as an acolyte. He could stay in the Cathedral provided he agreed to continue looking after the candles, delivering loaves to the older members of the choir, and a few other duties.

It almost made him throw down his candles in rage and disgust. Why should he be cast off, when these little bastards were allowed to stay? They had other places they could go to, they had homes; in Luke’s case, a wealthy home. Everyone knew how well off his people were. He came from the Soth family. It was unfair !

Luke was still walking slowly ahead of him. As Adam watched, Luke pulled out a lump of bread. He broke off a piece just as Adam saw an object that would allow him to take out his revenge in a mean and cruel manner on one of his most hated rivals.

The first Luke knew was when he heard the slap of sandalled feet behind him.

After seeing Henry in the hall, Luke had been musing over the celebrations for Holy Innocents’ Day and wondering whether he could somehow escape the humiliation of waiting upon the new boy-Bishop. Sadly he came to the conclusion that there was no escape: any attempt would show Henry that he had won, that he had succeeded in destroying Luke’s equilibrium.

Luke’s appetite had wakened. It felt like days since the feast in Stephen’s house; Luke sometimes thought that the whole of his life was spent in hunger. The amounts of food given to him and the other choirboys were never enough.

He was about to slip the first piece of bread into his mouth when he heard the feet. There was a hollow, empty-sounding rattle as Adam dropped his candle-box, and Luke was suddenly convinced that a ghost was coming to grab him, maybe to pull him down under the ground with him. Squeaking in terror, he felt strong arms grip him, felt himself swung up and over, upside-down, and his face was heading towards the ground.

Henry frowned at all the other desks, but before he could make a search, he heard the muffled cry from outside. Forgetting his pot of orpiment, he rose and went to the door. There, in the dim light that streamed from behind him in the doorway, he saw a figure lying on the ground. He felt the flesh of his scalp creep as he wondered whether it was a dead man, but then he realised that the body was lifting itself up.

He heard the sobs and frowned. It was weak to cry; but he would help if he could. Only when he arrived at Luke’s side did he recognise who it was, and the hand he had put out in sympathy stayed in mid-air as he realised that his sympathy might not be agreeable to this victim.

‘What in God’s name is going on?’ roared Gervase. He had been in his hall when he heard the first hiccupping cry, and now he peered from the door to see, as he thought, Henry leaning over Luke, having pushed him or thumped him.

Henry’s face turned to him, almost white in the cold moonlight, and Gervase instantly marked him down as guilty. He stormed out and went to Luke’s side, picking him up and then wincing. ‘Are you all right?’