Cromwell’s Blessing. Peter Ransley

years dropped away. He could have been talking to me when I was an apprentice. My nails bit into my palms and my cheeks were burning.

      ‘What irks a man more than vinegar on his tooth? A lingering messenger,’ Mr Tooley responded. ‘As the Proverbs have it.’

      I gave a silent cheer. As George turned to go, I saw I had left the cupboard door wide open. Mr Tooley’s old surplice lay unrolled on the floor. Hastily, I crammed things back into the cupboard, shut the door and hid the key. During this, George fired his parting shot. It was couched more in sorrow than in anger.

      ‘The warning is not just for the sheep, Mr Tooley, but for the shepherd.’

      ‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that!’

      Mr Tooley was livid with anger. George, seeing his point had struck home, twisted the knife. ‘Oh, it is not me, a humble sinner, talking. I am but the poor messenger of the council of elders, which by the 1646 ordinance …’

      Ordinance! As well as proverbs, George was stuffed with ordinances, which listed the scandalous offences of renouncers of the true Protestant faith. Mr Tooley took a step towards George. His fist was clenched and a pulse in his forehead was beating. George did not move away. He cocked his head with a look of sorrow on his face, almost as if he was inviting a blow.

      Afraid Mr Tooley would strike him – and afraid, for some reason, that this was exactly what George wanted – I stepped out into the corridor.

      The effect on the two men could not have been more different. Mr Tooley plainly saw me as he had always seen me.

      ‘The prodigal son,’ he said, with a wry smile, holding out his hand.

      George bowed. ‘My lord, congratulations on your good fortune. I beg to hope that your lordship realises that, in a small measure, it is due to me not sparing the rod, however much that grieved me.’

      There was more of this, but I took the unction as I used to take the blows. I had promised God I would not lose my temper. There were to be no more Scogmans. Diplomacy, not confrontation. I told them there was now no need to name Nehemiah a heretic in church.

      ‘He has recanted?’ George said.

      ‘He will be leaving Mr Black.’

      ‘He’s been dismissed?’

      I bowed almost as deeply as he did. ‘I believe people should worship according to their conscience, but the law is the law. Nehemiah will be replaced by another apprentice who will attend church in a proper manner.’

      I winced as he clasped his hands and lifted his eyes. ‘God be praised! I shrank from putting Mr Black through so much distress, as I did when I applied the rod to you, but it was for the good of both your souls.’

      He put out his hand. It felt as cold and slippery as the skin of a toad. I arranged the baptism with Mr Tooley in two weeks’ time. When I left I still had the clammy feeling of George’s grip. Matthew, the cunning man who had brought me up, would say I had been touched. It was a stupid superstition, but all the same I wiped my hand on the grass.

      My spirits rose again when I rode into Half Moon Court. The apple tree was a sad, withered stump, but from the shop came the familiar thump and sigh of the printing press. Sarah, the servant, came out to greet me. She walked with a limp now, but her banter had not changed since she used to rub pig’s fat into my aching bruises.

      ‘What has tha’ done to master, Tom?’

      ‘Done?’ I cried in alarm.

      ‘He’s had a face like a wet Monday for weeks. Now he’s skipped off like a two-year-old with mistress to buy her a new hat for the baptism.’

      ‘I only talked to him about his problems,’ I said modestly.

      ‘I wish you could talk to my rheumatism. My knee’s giving me gyp.’

      ‘Which knee?’ I said, stretching out my hand.

      ‘Getaway! I know you. Think you can cure the world one minute, and need curing yourself the next.’

      She hugged me just as she did when I was a child, then walked back into the house quite normally, before stopping to stare at me. ‘Why, Tom! Tha’s cured my knee!’

      I stared at her, my heart beating faster. Perhaps it was something to do with my prayers that morning.

      Sarah laughed, then winced at the effort she had made to walk normally. She flexed her knee and rubbed it ruefully, before limping back into the house. ‘Oh, Tom, dear Tom. If tha believes that, tha’ll believe anything.’

      Nehemiah was as good as any journeyman, I could see that. He was too absorbed in what had once been my daily task, to see me watching from the door. He was taller than me, and would have been handsome but for spots that erupted round his mouth and neck. It was a hard task for one man to feed the paper in the press and bring down the platen, but he did it with ease.

      I wondered why he did not put the sheets out to dry, as he should have done. Instead, he interleaved them with more absorbent paper before putting them carefully in an old knapsack. I gave a cry of surprise when I saw it was my old army knapsack. Nehemiah whirled round, dropping a printed sheet, and grabbed hold of me. I thought I was strong and fit but he twisted my arms into a lock and bent me double. His strong smell of sweat and ink was overpowering. I yelled out who I was. Only then did he release me with a confused apology.

      ‘I – I did not recognise you. I thought you were a spy, sir,’ he muttered.

      I laughed. The Half Moon printed the most boring of government ordinances. ‘A spy. What has Mr Black got to hide?’

      I bent to pick up the sheet he had dropped but he snatched it up and put it in the knapsack. I shrugged. While his master was out he was doing some printing of his own. I thought him none the worse for that. Most apprentices of any enterprise did so. When I was going to be a great poet I had secretly printed my poems to Anne on that very press.

      I gazed fondly at the battered knapsack, which I thought had been thrown away.

      ‘You do not want it, sir?’

      I shook my head, and he thanked me so profusely for it my heart went out to him, for I remembered when, in my crazy wanderings, it once contained everything I had in the world.

      ‘How would you like to be a journeyman, Nehemiah?’

      ‘Very much, sir. I have dreamed of it long enough.’

      ‘Well then, you shall be. In a few days’ time.’

      I smiled at his look of astonishment.

      ‘But my indentures are not over for –’

      ‘Nine months.’

      ‘And twenty days,’ he said, looking at the base of the press, where for the past year he had carved and crossed through each passing day before his release.

      I told him he was as skilled as he ever would be and the paperwork was a mere formality. I would arrange it. As a journeyman, his religion would then be a matter for his own conscience. I began to go into practical details, but he interrupted me. He had a stammer, which he had gradually mastered, but it returned now.

      ‘Has my m-master agreed?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘It is …’ His face reddened, intensifying the pale blue of his eyes. ‘D-dishonest.’

      I told him the rules were dishonest for apprentices – medieval rules, designed to give Guild Masters free labour for as long as possible.

      ‘What about George?’

      ‘There’ll be no trouble there. I’ve told him you were leaving.’

      ‘With-without telling me?’

      He began to make me feel uncomfortable, particularly as I thought he was right. I had been high-handed. ‘I’m sorry, but the opportunity