Rebellion's Message. Michael Jecks

is there? Royalty and all the grand folk arguing among themselves. They live in their palaces, eating the best food off silver plates, drinking the best wine out of golden goblets, and never spare a thought for the likes of us, unless we’re caught and held in their courts, and then they order us hanged without a second thought.’

      Wat chuckled. ‘You think so? What about the rioters?’

      ‘Rioters, my arse! Soon as the queen sends her men, they’ll be put to flight.’

      Wat had nothing to say to that. Indeed, there was little enough to be said. Bill was right.

      Bill Tanner was older than the rest of us, at nearly forty years. He was of middling height, broad at the shoulder, square-faced, brown-haired, and with a scar at the edge of his mouth that made his lips curl upward as though always sneering at the world. His grey eyes held a world-weary cynicism, but since he had been born in the turbulent years of good King Henry VIII’s reign, of immortal fame, and had lived through the troubles of King Edward VI’s, he reckoned he had earned the right to his cynicism. Most of us couldn’t remember the shock and fear when Henry ordered the destruction of the monasteries, nor the discontent when the Nun of Kent was executed for denouncing the king for something or other, nor the fears of invasion – which still prevailed. Bill had. He had survived more dangers and disasters than all of us, his confederates, put together. And he had gathered us together and bound us to each other.

      His was a simple creed: we were all one family. And, like any family, there was one father who ruled the rest. Bill was our leader, our father and our guide. What he didn’t know about the City of London wasn’t worth knowing. He had a finger in every pie, and he could trade anything we brought to him. I don’t know what we’d have done without him.

      The youngest of us, Wat, was a shorter fellow, with straw-coloured hair and a narrow face. He had suffered badly from scurvy last winter, and his voice had a lisp because he had lost so many teeth, no matter how much meat he ate. When Bill found him, Wat was a child, foraging among the trash on the street, searching for anything to eat. He had been orphaned for years already, and it was a miracle that he had survived as long as he had, living with the rats and cockroaches wherever he could find shelter. More recently, he had become a most accomplished thief and pocket-taker.

      Ham was a little older, a large, heavy lad with a face that had been beaten once too often for any of his looks to have survived. His ears were large, bloated things that looked as if they had been added as an afterthought, his nose was twisted and notched like an ancient sword-blade, and his brows were thick from fights. For all his size, though, he was kind and mild with all of us. It was only when he saw one of us in danger that he began to grow angry.

      There is another member of our little company, but he wasn’t there just yet. Gil – at thirty or more, the second oldest among us – was a proficient thief who could put the fear of the devil into any poor victim on the streets. He certainly did with me.

      Since Bill was already up, Moll rose as well. She settled her skirts without false modesty, covering those wonderful long legs, and patted her hair back into shape as she cast a look over at me. It was enough to make a shiver rise all up my spine. She could do that with a look, could Moll. I didn’t fool myself; she was unlikely to throw over Bill for a daft country boy like me. Bill was protection and security, and that counted for her. She had fled her home when she was young. Once, she told me that her mother had remarried after her father’s death, and her stepfather tried to climb into her bed and ‘get to know her better’ when her mother was away. She ran from home with the sound of his roars ringing in her ears, she said. I told her then that if he should ever find her again, Bill would kill him, and that seemed to give her comfort. She smiled gratefully. Me? No, I didn’t stand a chance, I reckoned, but that didn’t stop me looking, and every so often there was a gleam in her eyes that spoke silent promises of what she could do to me if we were ever alone together. I know: I can dream as well as the next man!

      She was slim as a willow, was Moll, with hair that glistened in the light as though she had auburn diamonds sparkling in it. Her face was pleasing to the eyes, too, with high cheek bones and slightly slanted eyes, and she had a way of holding her head low and peering up at a man from those big greenish eyes of hers that gave the appearance of a wanton challenging a fellow. I had adored her when I first met her, and since then my infatuation had increased to the degree that it was painful to watch her in Bill’s arms. Not as painful as his amusement at my predicament, though.

      ‘What, you want a handful of her, Jack?’ he said now. He had a twisted grin. ‘She’s ripe enough.’

      Moll squeaked as he put a mitt on her breast and squeezed. She caught him a slap on the cheek. ‘You wait till later, Bill Tanner! And stop embarrassing the poor lad. He don’t deserve it.’

      ‘He don’t care,’ Bill said, his other arm about her waist. ‘Come on, give me a …’

      My blushes, for my imagination was running riot at the thought of grappling with her delectable globes, were saved by the door flying wide. For a brief moment, my arrest and the end of my life on the scaffold flew before my eyes: I heard the judge pronounce my fate for the hideous murder of a man living in the city, I felt the shackles on my wrists and ankles, I felt the scorn of the crowds as they witnessed me pissing myself, the heat of my shame as I failed to make even a momentary speech in my own defence before the noose was set about my throat …

      And then I realized that the man at the door was no beadle. It was Gil.

      ‘The army! The Whitecoats are marching!’

      Yes, the Whitecoats. That was the big news of the day: that the rebels had approached close enough to justify sending a force against them. The City of London’s yeomen had been gathered together and were marching against the traitors who dared to challenge the new queen’s right to do as she wished. That was fine by me because, as the rest of the company eagerly grouped around Gil and belaboured him with questions until he covered his ears, I was left alone. Only Moll stood near me, eyeing the rest of them with weary and pitying amusement, like an elder sister eyeing her wayward brothers.

      Since I had caught my purse, I had not had time to look inside it. Now I took it up and opened the laces. It was a goodly size, with a delightful heft to it. Whoever had made this had expended quite a sum on it. The soft leather had hung from a thicker piece of leather that had been carefully cut through at the base, where it had been secured with a thong. A piece of the thong remained, and I could see the perfect, shining edge where the knife had sliced. It had been enormously sharp, then. For the rest, the purse was secured with a lace that had golden thread in it. Even here it gleamed in the light. I opened it and smiled to see the treasure inside. I had no idea how much money there was, but the sight of that many silver coins brought a smile to my face and a glow to my heart. I soon forgot all about the man slain in the alleyway. It was nothing to do with me, after all.

      ‘What’s that you’ve got?’ Bill said.

      I had been standing there gloating too long. I would have shoved it behind my back, but there was no point. My guilty face would give me away. ‘I won this today,’ I said, holding it out.

      We had a moderately strict policy of share and share alike in our group. I couldn’t keep it back, whether I wished to or not. Not now he’d caught me out, anyway. He was a clever bastard at that sort of thing. Bill could sense when someone was holding back on him.

      ‘Let me see it,’ Bill said and took the purse. His fingers shook as he took it, the avaricious old stoat. Bill took all our money and looked after it. That was the price we must pay for our safety here in the house. There was greed in his eyes, and then, I thought, something else, too: anger or hatred, directed at me. At first I thought it was just the way I had held out on him about the purse, but then I saw his eyes slide towards Moll, and that made me wonder. I’ve always liked Moll, as I said. Perhaps I’d been eyeing her too much. He didn’t like to think that anyone could challenge his position as her man, and I didn’t like to think that he could take it into his head to remove me as a potential challenger.

      I wasn’t going to worry about it now. My concerns were more to do with that dead body behind the tavern.

      Besides,