Wolf Hall (3 page)

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 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 burned 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 he going to hit when I'm gone?”

“Not our affair,” Kat says. “Bet is 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 recognize 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, favor-for-favor, 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 busnes. Wela i chi eto rhywbryd. Poblwc.”

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?

“Poblwc,”
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 kinds 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.