Fools and Mortals. Bernard Cornwell

room because the window gave good light and because the Percies, whatever else they stole, had left the old man his ink and a sheaf of quills. Besides, I liked Father Laurence. He was ancient, gentle, wise, and had long ceased to struggle against the enmity of Protestants. ‘I just want to die in peace,’ he would say, ‘and I’d prefer not to be dragged to the scaffold on a wicker hurdle to have my belly ripped open by some Smithfield butcher.’ He was crippled, and could scarcely walk without the help of a companion. The Widow Morrison, I think, let him live rent-free, and I suspected she made confession to him too, but it was best not to ask about things like that, yet most days I would hear footsteps on the lower stairs and the creak of his door and the mutter of voices, and suspect that some person had come to confess their sins and receive absolution. The parish constables must have known too, they were not fools, but he was a harmless old man, and well loved. The new minister of the parish was a fierce young zealot from Oxford who cursed all things of Rome, but when a parishioner lay dying it was often Father Laurence who was summoned, and he would limp down the street in his ancient, threadbare cassock, and local people greeted him with a smile, all but the Puritans, who were more likely to spit as he passed. When I had money I would take him food, coal, or firewood, and I always helped tidy his room after the Percies had ransacked it. ‘Read more to me,’ he said now. ‘Read more to me!’

      ‘“These are the forgeries of jealousy,”’ I read aloud,

       ‘And never since the middle summer’s spring

       Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,

       By pavéd fountain or by rushy brook,

       Or in the beachéd margent by the sea,

       To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind.’

      Father Laurence sighed, a small noise. I looked across the room to see his head had fallen against the high back of his chair, his eyes were closed, and his mouth open. He did not move, made no more sound, and I half started to my feet, thinking he had died. Then he spoke. ‘“To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind”!’ he said very softly. ‘“To dance our ringlets”! Oh, how perfect.’

      ‘Perfect?’

      ‘I remember, when I was a very young priest, seeing a girl dance. She had ringlets too, and her name was Jess.’ He sounded sad. ‘She danced beside a stream did my Jess, and I watched as she danced her ringlets to the whistling wind.’ He opened his eyes and smiled at me. ‘Your brother is so clever!’

      ‘Is he?’ I asked dourly.

      ‘You must be more generous, Richard. He speaks with the tongue of an angel.’

      ‘He doesn’t like me.’

      ‘Which is sad,’ Father Laurence said. ‘Perhaps it’s because you’re young and he’s not?’

      ‘He’s not old!’

      ‘Thirty-one, you told me? He’s in his middle age, Richard. And he dislikes you because you have what God never granted him. Good looks. His face is blunt, his chin weak, and his beard sparse. You, on the other hand …’ He left whatever he was about to say unfinished.

      ‘They call me pretty,’ I said resentfully.

      ‘But pretty in a boy grows to handsome in a man, and you’re a man now.’

      ‘Not according to my brother.’

      ‘And he dislikes you too,’ Father Laurence went on, ‘because you remind him of Stratford.’

      ‘He likes Stratford,’ I protested. ‘He keeps telling me he’ll buy property there.’

      ‘You tell me he was born in Stratford, that he grew up and married there, but I wonder if he was ever happy there. I think he became a different man in London, and he doesn’t want to be reminded of the old, unhappy William.’

      ‘Then why would he buy property there?’

      ‘Because when he returns, Richard, he would be the biggest man in town. He wants revenge on his childhood. He wants the respect of the town. Saint Paul tells us that when we were children we spoke as children, we understood and thought as children, but when we become men we put away childish things, but I’m not so sure we ever do put them away. I think the childish things linger on, and your brother craves what he wanted as a child, the respect of his home town.’

      ‘Did he tell you that, father?’

      He smiled. ‘He doesn’t visit me often, but when he does, we talk. He’s an interesting man.’

      ‘I just wish he’d help me more,’ I said resentfully.

      ‘Richard, Richard! In this life we can look to God for help, but God also expects us to look to ourselves. You must be a good player, a good man, and your brother will see it in the end. Don’t look to your brother for help, be a help to him.’

      I laughed at that, not because it was funny, but because I could not think what to say, then I dipped the quill in ink again and went on copying. As ever, when I used a pen, I remembered Thomas Mulliver, one of the ushers in the school at Stratford, and the man who had taught me to read and write. He carried a stick, which he rapped across our skulls if he detected inattention or a mistake. ‘Writing raises us above the beasts,’ he would chant. ‘Are you a beast, boy?’ And the stick would whistle through the air, and the sharp pain slice through the skull. He liked to quote Latin to us, even though most of us struggled with the strange language. ‘Audaces fortuna iuvat,’ he would chant. ‘And what does that mean? It means fortune favours the brave! Are you brave, boy?’ And the stick would hiss again. He was kinder in the afternoon, when his breath smelled richly of ale, and he would tell us jokes and even slip us a small coin if our work pleased him. I liked him well enough, but then he was discovered behind Holy Trinity Church with his hand up the skirt of Mistress Cybbes, wife of the bailiff, and that was the end of Thomas Mulliver.

      I had followed not long after. I hated Stratford. I hated my father’s sullen anger and my mother’s tears. My brother had left his wife and three small children in the house, the children cried, and Anne screamed at my mother, who wept and worried. No one was happy. Bad harvests had made food cruelly expensive, the summers were wet, the winters were cold, and my father plucked me from school because, he insisted, they could no longer afford to educate me nor feed me. I was fourteen when he told me my schooldays were over and that I was to learn a trade. ‘Thomas Butler has agreed you’ll be his apprentice. It’s a good opportunity.’ Butler was a carpenter, and by becoming his apprentice I would have to live in his house and thus be one less mouth for my mother to feed. I remember my father marching me around to the Butler house on a Thursday morning. ‘It’s a good trade, carpentry,’ he told me as we walked under the elms of Henley Street. ‘The blessed Virgin’s husband was a carpenter, God bless him.’

      ‘Why me?’ I asked. ‘Why not Gilbert or Edmund?’

      ‘Don’t be daft, boy. Gilbert’s already apprenticed. And your younger brother’s not old enough. Your sister is working, why shouldn’t you?’

      ‘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