Hilary Mantel Collection. Hilary Mantel

married and got out of it, thank God.’

      Morgan Williams says, ‘If Walter was my father, I tell you, I'd take to the road.’ He waits. ‘As it happens, we've gathered some ready money.’

      A pause.

      ‘I'll pay you back.’

      Morgan says, laughing, relieved, ‘And how will you do that, Tom?’

      He doesn't know. Breathing is difficult, but that doesn't mean anything, it's only because of the clotting inside his nose. It doesn't seem to be broken; he touches it, speculatively, and Kat says, careful, this is a clean apron. She's smiling a pained smile, she doesn't want him to go, and yet she's not going to contradict Morgan Williams, is she? The Williamses are big people, in Putney, in Wimbledon. Morgan dotes on her; he reminds her she's got girls to do the baking and mind the brewing, why doesn't she sit upstairs sewing like a lady, and praying for his success when he goes off to London to do a few deals in his town coat? Twice a day she could sweep through the Pegasus in a good dress and set in order anything that's wrong: that's his idea. And though as far as he can see she works as hard as ever she did when she was a child, he can see how she might like it, that Morgan would exhort her to sit down and be a lady.

      ‘I'll pay you back,’ he says. ‘I might go and be a soldier. I could send you a fraction of my pay and I might get loot.’

      Morgan says, ‘But there isn't a war.’

      ‘There'll be one somewhere,’ Kat says.

      ‘Or I could be a ship's boy. But, you know, Bella – do you think I should go back for her? She was screaming. He had her shut up.’

      ‘So she wouldn't nip his toes?’ Morgan says. He's satirical about Bella.

      ‘I'd like her to come away with me.’

      ‘I've heard of a ship's cat. Not of a ship's dog.’

      ‘She's very small.’

      ‘She'll not pass for a cat,’ Morgan laughs. ‘Anyway, you're too big all round for a ship's boy. They have to run up the rigging like little monkeys – have you ever seen a monkey, Tom? Soldier is more like it. Be honest, like father like son – you weren't last in line when God gave out fists.’

      ‘Right,’ Kat said. ‘Shall we see if we understand this? One day my brother Tom goes out fighting. As punishment, his father creeps up behind and hits him with a whatever, but heavy, and probably sharp, and then, when he falls down, almost takes out his eye, exerts himself to kick in his ribs, beats him with a plank of wood that stands ready to hand, knocks in his face so that if I were not his own sister I'd barely recognise him: and my husband says, the answer to this, Thomas, is go for a soldier, go and find somebody you don't know, take out his eye and kick in his ribs, actually kill him, I suppose, and get paid for it.’

      ‘May as well,’ Morgan says, ‘as go fighting by the river, without profit to anybody. Look at him – if it were up to me, I'd have a war just to employ him.’

      Morgan takes out his purse. He puts down coins: chink, chink, chink, with enticing slowness.

      He touches his cheekbone. It is bruised, intact: but so cold.

      ‘Listen,’ Kat says, ‘we grew up here, there's probably people that would help Tom out –’

      Morgan gives her a look: which says, eloquently, do you mean there are a lot of people would like to be on the wrong side of Walter Cromwell? Have him breaking their doors down? And she says, as if hearing his thought out loud, ‘No. Maybe. Maybe, Tom, it would be for the best, do you think?’

      He stands up. She says, ‘Morgan, look at him, he shouldn't go tonight.’

      ‘I should. An hour from now he'll have had a skinful and he'll be back. He'd set the place on fire if he thought I were in it.’

      Morgan says, ‘Have you got what you need for the road?’

      He wants to turn to Kat and say, no.

      But she's turned her face away and she's crying. She's not crying for him, because nobody, he thinks, will ever cry for him, God didn't cut him out that way. She's crying for her idea of what life should be like: Sunday after church, all the sisters, sisters-in-law, wives kissing and patting, swatting at each other's children and at the same time loving them and rubbing their little round heads, women comparing and swapping babies, and all the men gathering and talking business, wool, yarn, lengths, shipping, bloody Flemings, fishing rights, brewing, annual turnover, nice timely information, favour-for-favour, little sweeteners, little retainers, my attorney says … That's what it should be like, married to Morgan Williams, with the Williamses being a big family in Putney … But somehow it's not been like that. Walter has spoiled it all.

      Carefully, stiffly, he straightens up. Every part of him hurts now. Not as badly as it will hurt tomorrow; on the third day the bruises come out and you have to start answering people's questions about why you've got them. By then he will be far from here, and presumably no one will hold him to account, because no one will know him or care. They'll think it's usual for him to have his face beaten in.

      He picks up the money. He says, ‘Hwyl, Morgan Williams. Diolch am yr arian.’ Thank you for the money. ‘Gofalwch am Katheryn. Gofalwch am eich busness. Wela I chi eto rhywbryd. Pobl lwc.’

      Look after my sister. Look after your business. See you again sometime.

      Morgan Williams stares.

      He almost grins; would do, if it wouldn't split his face open. All those days he'd spent hanging around the Williamses' households: did they think he'd just come for his dinner?

      ‘Pobl lwc,’ Morgan says slowly. Good luck.

      He says, ‘If I follow the river, is that as good as anything?’

      ‘Where are you trying to get?’

      ‘To the sea.’

      For a moment, Morgan Williams looks sorry it has come to this. He says, ‘You'll be all right, Tom? I tell you, if Bella comes looking for you, I won't send her home hungry. Kat will give her a pie.’

      He has to make the money last. He could work his way downriver; but he is afraid that if he is seen, Walter will catch him, through his contacts and his friends, those kind of men who will do anything for a drink. What he thinks of, first, is slipping on to one of the smugglers' ships that go out of Barking, Tilbury. But then he thinks, France is where they have wars. A few people he talks to – he talks to strangers very easily – are of the same belief. Dover then. He gets on the road.

      If you help load a cart you get a ride in it, as often as not. It gives him to think, how bad people are at loading carts. Men trying to walk straight ahead through a narrow gateway with a wide wooden chest. A simple rotation of the object solves a great many problems. And then horses, he's always been around horses, frightened horses too, because when in the morning Walter wasn't sleeping off the effects of the strong brew he kept for himself and his friends, he would turn to his second trade, farrier and blacksmith; and whether it was his sour breath, or his loud voice, or his general way of going on, even horses that were good to shoe would start to shake their heads and back away from the heat. Their hooves gripped in Walter's hands, they'd tremble; it was his job to hold their heads and talk to them, rubbing the velvet space between their ears, telling them how their mothers love them and talk about them still, and how Walter will soon be over.

      He doesn't eat for a day or so; it hurts too much. But by the time he reaches Dover the big gash on his scalp has closed, and the tender parts inside, he trusts, have mended themselves: kidneys, lungs and heart.

      He knows by the way people look at him that his face is still bruised. Morgan Williams had done an inventory of him before he left: teeth (miraculously) still in his head, and two eyes, miraculously seeing. Two arms, two legs: what more do you want?

      He walks around the docks saying to people, do you know where there's a war just now?

      Each man he asks stares at