Bernard Cornwell - Fools and Mortals

‘I don’t want to be a carpenter!’

‘Well, that’s what you’ll be. And be glad you can read, write, and sum! That’s more schooling than most boys get. Doesn’t do no harm to know your letters and numbers, and now you can learn a trade too.’ I carried a bag with a change of clothes, which I clung to as my father stood in the Butler kitchen and drank a pot of ale with my new master, and as Agnes Butler, a surly creature, eyed me suspiciously. They had no children of their own, though Bess, an orphan who was just eleven years old, was their maid. She was a skinny little thing, with wide brown eyes, lank red hair, and a dark bruise on her forehead. Agnes saw me looking at her. ‘Take your lusting eyes off her, boy!’ she snapped. ‘He must sleep in the workshop,’ she added to her husband.

‘He shall,’ my new master said, ‘so he shall.’

Then my father patted me on the head. ‘He’s a good boy, most of the time. Behave yourself, Richard.’ And with that he was gone.

‘I’ll teach you a useful trade,’ Thomas Butler promised me, though all he ever taught me was how to stack firewood. ‘Winter’s coming,’ he told me, ‘time to split timber and slaughter hogs.’ When he deemed I had not worked hard enough, he hit me and he hit hard, sometimes using a piece of wood. He hit Bess too, and sometimes his wife, who hit back. They shrieked at each other. I hated them and missed my home. My father, when he was sober, was jovial, and my mother, when she was not distraught with worry, was loving. She had told us stories, weaving fantasies of castles and gallant knights, of animals that could talk, and of the spirits who haunted the green woodlands. I cried once after she had visited me, and Agnes Butler slapped me about the head. ‘You can’t go back home,’ she snarled, ‘we bought you! Seven years’ labour you owe us, and seven years’ labour you will give us.’

They fed me stale bread and weak slops, and made me sleep in the workshop, which was a shabby, dank shed in their yard. I was locked in at night, with no candles, and forbidden to feed the small fire on which Thomas Butler melted his glue. He found the ashes warm one morning, and I was beaten for that even though I had not fed the fire, which had simply burned longer than usual. Thomas Butler had hit me, then flourished an awl in my face. ‘Do that again, boy, and I’ll take out an eye. You won’t be so pretty then, will you?’

Seven years’ labour, and it lasted three weeks.

It ended on a Saturday morning when I accidentally knocked over the glue pot. ‘You little bastard,’ Thomas snarled, and picked up a length of beechwood waiting by the lathe, ‘I’ll beat you senseless.’ He ran at me, and, in panic, I snatched up a heavy wooden maul that I swung at him.

It hit. It slammed into the side of his skull, and he went down like a stunned ox. I remember he twitched among the wood shavings for a brief moment, then went still. A trickle of blood oozed from his ear, and I stood, whimpering, remembering that they hanged murderers. Thomas Butler did not move. A purse hung from his belt, and when he fell some coins had rolled out of it. Three shillings and eight pennies, which I stole. They hanged thieves too, but I reasoned they could not hang me twice.

I could not go home. The constables would look for me in Henley Street, but nor could I stay. I was not thinking properly. The panic that had made me snatch up the wooden hammer was still making me shake. I was fourteen and a murderer. So I ran. I was crying, I remember that, crying as I ran into the world.

Fate is strange, but real. I was told, much later, that I had been born under a lucky star, while my mother, God save her soul, believed the angels watched over us, one angel to every person, and my angel was watchful that morning. I fled the yard and turned north towards Warwick. Why Warwick? Perhaps because the thought of hanging was still tormenting me, and Warwick was where murderers were hanged, but within a few yards I saw Peg Quiney, a friend of my mother’s who would have recognised me, and so I turned and ran the other way. I ran blindly, not stopping to catch my breath until I had crossed the bridge and was on the road to Ettington. Sheep bleated in a field beyond a ditch and hedge. Two horsemen came from the south and I hid deep in a great bunch of cow parsley. The horsemen passed without seeing me. I was shaking still, trying not to sob.

The horsemen went towards the town, and I fell asleep. That still surprises me, that in my terror I slept, and Lord knows for how long. Maybe an hour? Maybe two, but then I was woken by a dog licking my face, and I heard a familiar and friendly voice. ‘Hiding, boy?’ It was Edward Sales, a Stratford carrier and a kindly man, sitting high on his wagon with his two brindle horses, Gog and Magog, in the wagon’s harness. The wagon’s bed was heaped with sacks and crates. Edward had once carried woolsacks to London for my father, back when there was money in the house. ‘Come here, Lucifer!’ he called to his dog. ‘I wouldn’t have spied you,’ he said, ‘if Lucifer hadn’t smelled you out.’ Lucifer, a great ugly hound, looked terrifying, but I knew of old that he was more likely to lick a man to death than bite him. ‘They’re looking for you, Richard,’ Edward went on, ‘hue and cry, uphill and down dale.’

‘I didn’t mean to kill him,’ I stammered.

‘What? Kill Tom Butler!’ He laughed. ‘He’s not dead. He’ll have a pain in his skull for a month, and serve the miserable old bugger right. But you didn’t kill him. He’s got a noddle like an oak stump.’

‘He’s alive?’

‘Alive and spitting curses.’

‘He’ll kill me if I go back,’ I said.

‘More than like, yes he will. Not a forgiving man, is he? Nor would I be, married to that shrew. She’d claw the eyes out of an angel, that one, then piss in the sockets.’

I climbed out of the ditch. ‘I can’t go home either.’ I had stolen money. I was a thief, and thieves are hanged.

Ned seemed to know what I was thinking, because he grinned. ‘They won’t hang you, boy. Maybe brand you? A big T on your forehead? But most like your father will pay Tom Butler some silver and send you back to him.’

I hesitated for a moment, then asked the question that changed my life. ‘Where are you going, Ned?’

‘London, boy. Down to the big stink.’

‘I have money,’ I pulled two of the shillings from my pocket and brushed the sawdust from them, ‘can I come?’

Ned stared at me for what seemed a long time. One of his horses, either Gog or Magog, grazed the thick roadside grass. ‘He’ll get wind eating that,’ Ned said, and jerked a rein. ‘And what will you do in London, Richard?’

‘My brother’s there.’

‘So he is. Well, hop up, then, hop up.’

I went to London.

London!

Ever since my brother had gone to London I had been fascinated by the city, by the stories men and women told of it, and of its glory that was so much greater than Warwick or Kenilworth, let alone little Stratford. Ned Sales had often talked of it when sitting in our kitchen. ‘I saw the Queen herself once,’ I remember him saying, ‘and she had a thousand horsemen carrying lit torches that flamed all around her. She glowed! Like a ruby, all red and shiny! Of course they cleaned the city for her,’ he had chuckled. ‘They hung tapestries and flags over the windows. Sometimes just bed sheets.’ He had sipped his ale and looked at me. ‘That’s to stop folk chucking their turds and piss out the window. Wouldn’t do to have a common turd spattered on Her Majesty’s hair.’

‘Don’t talk so,’ my mother had said, but with a smile.

‘’Tis true, Mistress Mary, I swear it.’ He had made the sign of the cross, which made my mother tut, but again with a smile.