The Mirror and the Light

But it is some time till he returns to business: a night, a day, a night. He has gone down to Putney. For some time – now he is fourteen, fifteen – he has been hanging about at the Williamses’ house in Mortlake. His sister Kat has married into these respectable folk, and they say, ‘Young Thomas, he’s a clean biddable lad: writes a fair hand, good with figures, steady around horses, and not too proud to chop firewood or swill out the yard. Anybody would have him apprentice, and be glad of him.’

They talk about him as if they were selling him.

‘Poor little lad,’ a woman says. ‘Walter knocks him about. But then you know what Walter is.’

The Williamses know nothing of the imperatives of your life, as you lead it now. They know nothing of the tangle of Putney feuds, the network of obligations to fight and win that has ensnared you since you could walk: sure as any duke, you have honour, honour must be served. The Williamses are good people, and that protects them from the need that gnaws you: the need for everything you haven’t got and they’ll never want.

The Williamses say, ‘We could get the boy a place. There’s Arthur Whatyoucallit, over Esher way. He wants a lad.’

He cannot bear it, this place he will get. He cannot be Arthur’s lad, over Esher way. He has to be some other lad, that would make Esher quake.

The time he spends with his sister, it gets him out of Walter’s way, but then again it allows the eel boy to arm his band. Since he was seven years old the eel boy has been his enemy. He does not know how the feud began. But he remembers dipping the eel boy’s head in a barrel, holding him under till the bugger nearly drowned.

Now when he goes swaggering home, the eel boy and his friends are waiting. ‘Oy,’ they call. ‘Oy, Put-an-edge-on-it.’

They call him that because Walter grinds knives. They sing when they see him:

‘I lay ten year in Newgate

Methought I lay too long:

My whoreson fetters hurt me sore,

My fetters were too strong.’

They call out, ‘You Irish bastard, that go in a bald dogskin!’

Is Walter Irish? He denies it, but you wouldn’t put it past him.

They shout, ‘You killed your mother when you were born. She couldn’t stand to look at you, out you slid and she cut her throat.’

His sister Kat says, ‘Don’t listen to them. That’s not what occurred.’

He calls back, ‘You devil’s turd, eel boy, are you tired of life?’

Eel boy calls, ‘I’ll dint you, craphead.’

‘When?’ he says.

‘Saturday night?’

‘I’ll skin and salt you, and fry you in a pan.’

So then he has to do it.

Saturday night you chased him uphill. By then you had created a deep fear in his heart, by messages transmitted through acquaintances of yours. If eel boy thinks (and he has had days to think) he will recall that he has lost every bout he has fought with you. He can’t fight history, so he runs, because what else can he do? He could stand on the high road, and offer his hand: but then, Thomas Craphead would slice his fingers off.

If he runs to his uncle’s warehouse, eel boy believes, he’ll escape you. He’ll go charging past the watchman at the gate, who will bustle up and strong-arm you, ‘Crummel, what do you here?’

But there is no watchman tonight, as you well know. When you issued out, Walter and his mates were an hour into strong ale. He’s a beast of a brewer, but he keeps back the best for his crew. And it’s Wilkin the Watch who sticks his face out of the room: ‘Drink with us, Thomas?’

He says, ‘I’m going to church.’

Wilkin retreats, withdraws his slack glistening face. From behind the door, rollicking song: By Cock, ye make me spill my ale …

You walk, under the waning moon. Only when you sight eel boy do you break into a trot, an easy pace that will take you unwinded to your destination. When you enter the yard he is not in sight. But there is no one to stop you following him into the darkness, into the undercroft, where under deep vaulting, behind chests and boxes stamped with the devices of alien cities and their trading guilds, eel boy has burrowed in.

You think of the home you left. You wonder where Walter and his mates have got to with their song. With its refrains and variations they can draw it out an hour or more. Walter likes to take the lass’s part, squealing as she is backed against the wall: Let go I say …

Then the men chorus: Abide awhile! Why have ye haste? and mime pulling their breeches down.

Luckily, when they sing this song, there is never an actual woman in the room.

Down in the cellars your eyes have adjusted to the gloom. You want to laugh. You can hear the rasp of the boy’s breath. You move towards him, and you let him know that you know exactly where he is. ‘You might as well wave a flag,’ you call.

You halt. If you stand longer (and you have the patience) he will begin to cry. Beg.

Let go I say …