Hilary Mantel Collection. Hilary Mantel

Morgan Williams comes in, he is wearing his good town coat. He looks Welsh and pugnacious; it's clear he's heard the news. He stands by Kat, staring down, temporarily out of words; till he says, ‘See!’ He makes a fist, and jerks it three times in the air. ‘That!’ he says. ‘That's what he'd get. Walter. That's what he'd get. From me.’

      ‘Just stand back,’ Kat advises. ‘You don't want bits of Thomas on your London jacket.’

      No more does he. He backs off. ‘I wouldn't care, but look at you, boy. You could cripple the brute in a fair fight.’

      ‘It never is a fair fight,’ Kat says. ‘He comes up behind you, right, Thomas? With something in his hand.’

      ‘Looks like a glass bottle, in this case,’ Morgan Williams says. ‘Was it a bottle?’

      He shakes his head. His nose bleeds again.

      ‘Don't do that, brother,’ Kat says. It's all over her hand; she wipes the blood clots down herself. What a mess, on her apron; he might as well have put his head there after all.

      ‘I don't suppose you saw?’ Morgan says. ‘What he was wielding, exactly?’

      ‘That's the value,’ says Kat, ‘of an approach from behind – you sorry loss to the magistrates’ bench. Listen, Morgan, shall I tell you about my father? He'll pick up whatever's to hand. Which is sometimes a bottle, true. I've seen him do it to my mother. Even our little Bet, I've seen him hit her over the head. Also I've not seen him do it, which was worse, and that was because it was me about to be felled.'

      ‘I wonder what I've married into,’ Morgan Williams says.

      But really, this is just something Morgan says; some men have a habitual sniffle, some women have a headache, and Morgan has this wonder. The boy doesn't listen to him; he thinks, if my father did that to my mother, so long dead, then maybe he killed her? No, surely he'd have been taken up for it; Putney's lawless, but you don't get away with murder. Kat's what he's got for a mother: crying for him, rubbing the back of his neck.

      He shuts his eyes, to make the left eye equal with the right; he tries to open both. ‘Kat,’ he says, ‘I have got an eye under there, have I? Because it can't see anything.’ Yes, yes, yes, she says, while Morgan Williams continues his interrogation of the facts; settles on a hard, moderately heavy, sharp object, but possibly not a broken bottle, otherwise Thomas would have seen its jagged edge, prior to Walter splitting his eyebrow open and aiming to blind him. He hears Morgan forming up this theory and would like to speak about the boot, the knot, the knot in the twine, but the effort of moving his mouth seems disproportionate to the reward. By and large he agrees with Morgan's conclusion; he tries to shrug, but it hurts so much, and he feels so crushed and disjointed, that he wonders if his neck is broken.

      ‘Anyway,’ Kat says, ‘what were you doing, Tom, to set him off? He usually won't start up till after dark, if it's for no cause at all.’

      ‘Yes,’ Morgan Williams says, ‘was there a cause?’

      ‘Yesterday. I was fighting.’

      ‘You were fighting yesterday? Who in the holy name were you fighting?’

      ‘I don't know.’ The name, along with the reason, has dropped out of his head; but it feels as if, in exiting, it has removed a jagged splinter of bone from his skull. He touches his scalp, carefully. Bottle? Possible.

      ‘Oh,’ Kat says, ‘they're always fighting. Boys. Down by the river.’

      ‘So let me be sure I have this right,’ Morgan says. ‘He comes home yesterday with his clothes torn and his knuckles skinned, and the old man says, what's this, been fighting? He waits a day, then hits him with a bottle. Then he knocks him down in the yard, kicks him all over, beats up and down his length with a plank of wood that comes to hand …’

      ‘Did he do that?’

      ‘It's all over the parish! They were lining up on the wharf to tell me, they were shouting at me before the boat tied up. Morgan Williams, listen now, your wife's father has beaten Thomas and he's crawled dying to his sister's house, they've called the priest … Did you call the priest?’

      ‘Oh, you Williamses!’ Kat says. ‘You think you're such big people around here. People are lining up to tell you things. But why is that? It's because you believe anything.’

      ‘But it's right!’ Morgan yells. ‘As good as right! Eh? If you leave out the priest. And that he's not dead yet.’

      ‘You'll make that magistrates' bench for sure,’ Kat says, ‘with your close study of the difference between a corpse and my brother.’

      ‘When I'm a magistrate, I'll have your father in the stocks. Fine him? You can't fine him enough. What's the point of fining a person who will only go and rob or swindle monies to the same value out of some innocent who crosses his path?’

      He moans: tries to do it without intruding.

      ‘There, there, there,’ Kat whispers.

      ‘I'd say the magistrates have had their bellyful,’ Morgan says. ‘If he's not watering his ale, he's running illegal beasts on the common, if he's not despoiling the common he's assaulting an officer of the peace, if he's not drunk he's dead drunk, and if he's not dead before his time there's no justice in this world.’

      ‘Finished?’ Kat says. She turns back to him. ‘Tom, you'd better stay with us now. Morgan Williams, what do you say? He'll be good to do the heavy work, when he's healed up. He can do the figures for you, he can add and … what's the other thing? All right, don't laugh at me, how much time do you think I had for learning figures, with a father like that? If I can write my name, it's because Tom here taught me.’

      ‘He won't,’ he says. ‘Like it.’ He can only manage like this: short, simple, declarative sentences.

      ‘Like? He should be ashamed,’ Morgan says.

      Kat says, ‘Shame was left out when God made my dad.’

      He says, ‘Because. Just a mile away. He can easily.’

      ‘Come after you? Just let him.’ Morgan demonstrates his fist again: his little nervy Welsh punch.

      After Kat had finished swabbing him and Morgan Williams had ceased boasting and reconstructing the assault, he lay up for an hour or two, to recover from it. During this time, Walter came to the door, with some of his acquaintance, and there was a certain amount of shouting and kicking of doors, though it came to him in a muffled way and he thought he might have dreamed it. The question in his mind now is, what am I going to do, I can't stay in Putney. Partly this is because his memory is coming back, for the day before yesterday and the earlier fight, and he thinks there might have been a knife in it somewhere; and whoever it was stuck in, it wasn't him, so was it by him? All this is unclear in his mind. What is clear is his thought about Walter: I've had enough of this. If he gets after me again I'm going to kill him, and if I kill him they'll hang me, and if they're going to hang me I want a better reason.

      Below, the rise and fall of their voices. He can't pick out every word. Morgan says he's burnt his boats. Kat is repenting of her first offer, a post as pot-boy, general factotum and chucker-out; because, Morgan's saying, ‘Walter will always be coming round here, won't he? And “Where's Tom, send him home, who paid the bloody priest to teach him to read and write, I did, and you're reaping the bloody benefit now, you leek-eating cunt.”’

      He comes downstairs. Morgan says cheerily, ‘You're looking well, considering.’

      The truth is about Morgan Williams – and he doesn't like him any the less for it – the truth is, this idea he has that one day he'll beat up his father-in-law, it's solely in his mind. In fact, he's frightened of Walter, like a good many people in Putney – and, for that matter, Mortlake and Wimbledon.

      He says, ‘I'm on my way, then.’

      Kat says, ‘You have to stay tonight. You know the second day is the worst.’

      ‘Who's