But now I hung in the doorway like a dead crow on a gibbet, panting, waiting for my heart to burst out through my ears. Then I remembered there was a sharp knife and an open door at my back. The slam turned a few ruddy faces in my direction. I reeled over to the bench where my friends sat. Welsh Owen glanced over his shoulder, and shifted his bum over to make room for me. I sank down next to him. Suddenly I was very angry. I slammed the palm of my hand down on the table. That got the company's attention. William of Morpeth turned his pox-marked face to me.
Where in the name of Saint Agatha's dugs did you get to?' he asked. My friends were staring at me now. My five friends: Welsh Owen, Cornish Owen, William, Alfred and Martin de Gallis. 'Someone get me a beer,' I said. 'Then I'll tell you.'
Chapter Two
But more than one mugful of the Crozier's delectable beer nestled in my belly before I turned to my friends at last. Well, get on with it!' demanded Martin de Gallis. I reached for yet another mug, and saw that my hand was shaking a little less.
'A little respect, by your leave, for one who has looked into the eyes of Death,' I said. Now I had their attention. 'I went down to the river for a piss,' I continued, 'and when I got back some drunkards were scuffling in front of the door, so I took the back entrance. I walked in and saw gold all over the floor, and then someone jumped on me.' Who jumped on you?' said William. What sort of gold?' said Alfred.
'Gold,' I said. 'Real gold. A great amount. And then that madman…' I paused. The man must really have been mad. I shivered. 'He pulled out a knife and put it to my throat – said he was waiting for the greedy people.' 'Like us!' shouted Cornish Owen. I ignored him.
'He cut his own finger and flicked blood in my face,' I said. 'Then I ran.' William of Morpeth leaned over and stared at me. "You do have blood on you,' he said. 'What did he look like, Patch?'
Patch was my nickname. I was christened Petroc, but as I left my mother the midwife blacked my eye with a fat finger, and I was Patch from that day forth. Although the mark faded as I grew, the name remained, and while to most folk I was brother Petroc, to my friends I was Patch – and Will was my greatest friend. I took a long drink and described the man.
'I believe I've seen him,' said William, scowling. 'Going in and out of the Bishop's palace – I thought he looked like a man-at-arms.'
'Well for God's sake keep away from him,' I snapped. 'He has evil about him. And he has a Moorish knife,' I added, remembering. My companions were gawping at me. All at once I felt sick inside, and sick of them. I stood up. 'I'm going,' I said.
I glanced back as I walked unsteadily to the door. They were still open-mouthed, apart from Cornish Owen, who was reaching for my beer. Outside, the air had got chillier. The moon had set, and a sky full of stars blazed above me. My lodgings were across the river, and I set out for the bridge. The streets were empty. I realised that sweat had soaked though my underclothes, and the cold was biting clammily at my goose-bumped skin. I heard quick footfalls behind me, and a hand clapped to my shoulder as I turned, my heart jumping madly for the second time that night. 'Hold up, Petroc,' said William of Morpeth.
I stared at him blindly for a long instant, while my blood cooled and drained from my throbbing head. And so we stood, each with a handful of each other's clothes, until I found my voice.
'By Christ and his virgin mother, Will! Cut my throat and have done, if I must spend the rest of my life pissing in my robes from fear.'
William gave my shoulder a hard squeeze and released me. There was worry in his pox-eaten visage, and now that my fright had passed I was glad of his company. *You are my bait, Patch -I wish to see this Moorish knifeman for myself,' he said, linking arms with me. We started off again, towards the bridge.
As I have said, Will was my closest friend. The rest were hangers-on; friends of convenience, useful to pass the time with (and in the case of Martin de Gallis, a courtier's bastard, useful for an occasional loan), but Will was the only one with any depth. In their beer-blurred and half-formed minds the others resented this bond a little, probably because they too were not particularly fond of each other, and made sport with us at times. They called us The Tups, in honour of our sheep-rearing origins, and would sometimes bleat at us by way of greeting, which we ignored. They were not, I confess, inherently wicked in any way, but more like children who stir the bottom of clear puddles merely to see the water muddy and spoiled. I have no doubt that each of them attained fat parishes and are lording it to this day, raising the skirts of their parishioners' ripe wives and guzzling down the fruits of other folk's honest labour. Go to, my friends, go to: I wish you joy.
Will, though, pursued his pleasures single-mindedly and without regard for the strictures of canon law. We were cut from very different cloth, he and I, he the knowing one, myself the innocent – although that is untrue. Will, in his way, was an innocent too, and threw himself into his drinking, whoring and fighting with the passion of a child, not of a fallen man. Perhaps that was why we were friends. For he never attempted to draw me into his wicked ways, and I, for my part, could not find it in my heart to scold him or even, truly, disapprove.
But nevertheless we were very different. And I had felt that difference keenly this very day. It was my habit to call on Will at his lodgings and find out from him what the evening's entertainment was likely to be – another telling indication of my own rather pious nature, that I was happier to go along with another's plans than admit to my own – and around sunset I had knocked on his door in the mean lodging house that stood rather too near the tanneries for comfort. He had bid me enter, and I strode in, to find him sitting on the edge of his pallet, arm around a girl.
I knew that Will made free with the city's whores -'courtesans,' he delighted in calling them – but it was a shock to find one of these creatures sitting in front of me, close enough for me to smell her, a warm waft of vetiver and sweat. She was young, no older than me, with the round, pink face of a country girl, a tangled mass of yellow hair piled on top of her head in a comically inept attempt to ape the courtly fashion of the day. She was plump, and her bosom was straining the threadbare linen of her tunic.
'This is Clarissa,' said Will. 'Clarissa, this fine personage is Petroc, my brother in Jesus.'
'Come in, Petroc,' said Clarissa, with a giggle that was almost coy. Her voice confirmed that she was indeed a local girl from some outlying village. I stepped into the room and closed the door hurriedly.
What ho, Will,' I stammered, trying but failing to sound like a man of the world.
What ho, yourself,' he replied. 'Are we away to the Crozier?' 'I hope,' said I.
"Well then,' he said to the girl, 'I will take my leave of you, dearest.'
You've kept me too long as it is,' she pouted, and pinched him lightly on the earlobe.
I saw then that Clarissa was arranging her clothes. So I had at least blundered in on the end of their business, not the beginning. She stood, plucked something from the top of Will's clothes-chest. I saw the flash of metal as she wound it into a fold of her skirt. Then she was standing before me, and regarding me pertly, her head cocked to one side. I found myself searching her face for the marks of sin, but all I saw was a pretty, tired country girl.