The Two Confessions

by John Whitbourn

  ‘When you said you wished to invest, my initial misgivings disappeared. The fraudulent desire only immediate gold in their hands. Thus I am satisfied. Would you care for refreshments whilst your certificate is drawn up?’

  The tally book was already passed to an elderly clerk perched on a high desk. He began to unroll a piece of vellum on which to inscribe the transaction.

  Samuel was ravenous but he'd heard disturbing things about the Jewish way with food - something about saving or removing blood. Whether true or false he still feared falling on whatever was provided and devouring every crumb. Which wasn't on: not here. It must serve as another test of resolve.

  ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I'll call later and collect it.’

  ‘But you'll have no receipt till then,’ the Hebrew protested. ‘It is a substantial sum....’

  ‘I trust you. You wouldn't cheat me.’

  There were two aspects of truth to that. Firstly, it suited Christendom to tolerate some usury in its midst - but any fraud allowed expression of a backlog of disapproval. Justice wasn't often tempered by mercy in such cases; and punishments had been known to get a touch indiscriminate - even communal. The Hebrews, mindful of this, operated their own draconian system of control. Legend had it that throats were slit and wrongs put right long before the Christians got wind of them.

  Secondly, Samuel was discovering that he'd brought more than luggage up from Sussex. The caution he inspired at Cliffe survived the transfer to London's wider stage. For all that he was on the way to being ragged, something within him made people... careful, and solicitous of his good opinion. Aside from the sum he'd just stored out of reach for five years it was his only asset. Aware of that, he was constantly testing its extent.

  ‘You’re right,’ agreed the Hebrew, keeping any inflection from his voice. ‘I wouldn't cheat you. Because God is watching.’

  Trevan followed the Hebrew’s upward gaze – and made clear he saw only ceiling. He even waved at the nothing. The transaction failed to end in handshakes.

  Outside the fortified shop, Samuel punched the air in triumph. He stared down a passing group of black-clad clerks who'd looked at him.

  ‘Yes!’ he said, to no one and everyone.

  Yes: he'd won another victory over self. That was another temptation gone. With such a record of defeat his weaker impulses ought to soon give up the fight and depart. The sooner the better: they're weren't welcome on the voyage he intended.

  Samuel strode off down Lower Thames Street into the future, stomach rumbling plaintively.

  U[U[U[U[U[U[U

  cHAPTER 8

  ‘Get him!’

  ‘Oi, shit-a-bed! Come 'ere!’

  Samuel had no intention of doing any such thing: Middlesex Street market must see him no more – unless/until he got hungry again. Meanwhile, this pilfered round of bread was rightly his by virtue of the Trade Guilds shutting him out from every honest employment. If he was forever damned as a 'straw-head Sussex foreigner' everywhere he went then he'd bloody well behave like one.

  What he lacked in speed he made up for in bulk. People that might have impeded a swifter but thinner man thought it higher wisdom to get out of Samuel's way. Thus he made good time through the crowded market place. Sanctuary or concealment were hard by: Crutched Friars or Pepys Park respectively. With luck he ought to make it.

  Unfortunately, the path he cleared was of equal use to the Watchmen and stallholder. Some of them had longer legs than he. There was also the question of them tiring of the chase and seeking a clean shot. His back, broad enough as it was, felt a mile wide and getting wider.

  As if it weren't enough that he should chose to turn thief just as a Watch patrol passed by, fate saw fit to throw in a moral dilemma. Samuel could just have trampled the toddler: she would have survived. Her mother had shamelessly failed the test and drawn back from impact, but the child was not so agile. Trevan could not go round her; his pace too headlong, the way blocked by stalls. As with life itself, the choice was either to proceed or concede. Much as it might be desired, there was no option to step aside for a while, to rest and soberly review.

  Given his background, it wasn't open to Samuel to be ruthless regarding an abandoned child. He halted and turned to face the hunt.

  There were four main actors besides himself, plus a swarm of bit-players who might saunter on stage when the plot was clarified. The officer of the Watch stood back, dimly glimpsed behind his men and of no present account. Samuel calmly rested the stolen cartwheel loaf on a handy barrow.

  ‘Righty-ho!’

  They hadn't expected him to speak first. Nor was it playing the game to not surrender.

  ‘Righty-ho to you too, you basta-....’

  The portly Watchman, all puffed out and florid, hadn't thought to be drawn forward by the muzzle of his own musket. He'd been waving it in the general direction of the criminal's chest. That should have been deterrent enough. Meeting Samuel's fist ended his brief and petulant thoughts on the subject.

  Then an elbow jab and an agonising boot to the vulnerable shin area greatly reduced the interest of two more guardians of market law. Finally, since it didn't seem fair (as the injured party) to likewise anoint the bread stall man, Samuel dismissed him with a 'Boo!' to his frightened face. And that seemed that.

  He was armed now with the fallen Watchman's gun, but made no move to use it. The field was his to quit. Around him the circling mob drew back. There was even some applause. Samuel looked at the grinning faces and realised his mistake. He'd hadn't come to London to earn this sort of approval. He imagined other faces - and two in particular - observing.

  ‘On second thoughts,’ Trevan told his adversaries, both sleeping and shrinking variants, ‘I'll keep my dignity: you keep your bread. I'd sooner starve.’

  The loaf was spun at its former owner and thudded into his chest, causing him to step back - his favoured direction at the moment.

  ‘And... sorry.’

  So saying, Samuel dropped the musket, having first disabled it by wrenching out the lighted cord. He turned to go.

  ‘I don't think so.’

  It was the Watch-officer's first utterance and had horrible confidence about it. Whether he was doubting Samuel's apology or departure or both was unclear. What was certain and relevant was his pistol aimed at Samuel's head.

  He was a drinker, his face told that much: but presently in passable control. He might even be a jolly man when not borrowing the Grim Reaper's eyes, as now.

  ‘Oh yes, certainly,’ the man laughed, perceiving and answering his target's unspoken question. It was kind of him to confirm he would shoot. Samuel looked and believed.

  ‘For mettlesome gentlemen such as yourself,’ said the officer, his business arm never wavering, ‘we go that extra mile. Special care. So that you can go extra miles for us….’

  The worst elements in the crowd guffawed and started to make rowing motions.

  ************

  ‘Look on, boy: store that sight in your mind to tell y' grandchildren.’

  There was only one person Samuel wished to sire descendants from, and here, mired in this slough of fortune, he didn't thank people for reminders of her. So the rickety old soldier's attempt at conversation went unanswered. Unfortunately, the man’s lonely home-life led him to persevere.

  ‘Still, a well-set-up bruiser like you, I s'pose you'd rather be out there in the thick of it.’

  Further failure to reply would be downright insulting. Samuel forced himself to think, studying the view.

  He knew that, over to the west, Reading was ablaze. It had been a smoke-pall against the sunset and now a faint glow by night. Lesser lights orbited it as nearby villages went up. Guard duty on London's walls provided a nicely distant view of the Leveller insurrection dying in flames.

  ‘I don't know so much,’ Samuel answered eventually. ‘Not having killed anything more than a rabbit it might not be to my taste. Besides, death himself is striding round out there: it's not all one way. I
can't be doing with too much danger: I've plans to fulfil first.’

  The old man was obviously impressed, taken aback by an honest reply. That wasn't too common in the not exactly elite City Watch, especially now its better elements were drawn off into the Thames Valley Crusade. Samuel would have joined them but for the ten year term binding him. That had been the price demanded for escaping a galley rowing-bench; the local commander's way of retaining a few handy types at his disposal. 'Set a thief to... well, you know the saying', was the way he put it as Samuel put his signature to the contract. It was a bargain and a kindness really. Mediterranean galley slaves rarely outlived their sentence.

  ‘You've a good heart, Trevan,’ his companion informed him, still staring out at the holocaust that would end the campaign. ‘Don't lose it. Carry on just as you are. I've raised men up and laid men low in my time, and I've no doubt which's better.’

  Samuel turned about. The sentry duty was dragging, and nothing was going to happen anyway. The fiery horizon told him that: the rebels were beaten, and he only had the squalid Watch barracks to go 'home' to. He was overdue some human contact.

  ‘I didn't know you had family, Walter. Someone said you were all alone.’

  ‘I am. I lost 'em in a shipwreck off Morwenstow - that's down Cornwall way, I'm told - back in '63. The wife and all my little 'uns perished.’

  ‘I'm sorry.’ Samuel hefted his heavy musket and shifted footing on the parapet.

  ‘So was I. People said wreckers done it, holding out Judas-lights to draw 'em in. I know they do do that down there, but not to a troopship I reckon. Where's the sense in that? A mountain of risk for a mole-hill of gain: that's the way I reasoned. Leastways, I never went looking for revenge.’

  ‘Probably wise, Walter.’

  ‘They were coming out to join me, see; so for a while I held me-self responsible. I went a bit mad I think, looking back.’

  Samuel could have left it there, employing the distraction of cannon fire from behind the wall. The great bombardment of Reading's defences, titanic but too far off to be heard, had ended at dawn that morning. Then came the assault. Therefore this must be the Westminster Citadel's salute to victory. Although London had contributed men and ordnance to the fray the stay-at-home remainder had felt left out and so now let rip with zeal. Street revellers in Whitechapel cheered each cannonade. It all merited an easy comment about rear echelons' lust for blood, but Samuel left it unsaid - and thus changed his entire life.

  ‘I might have stayed in the Bosphorus, if they'd made it there.’ Walter hadn't even heard the gunfire; all his attention was long ago and far away. ‘But they didn’t. So I came back home.’

  Samuel had heard of the place, courtesy of Father Omar. It was mission territory, as exotic and obscure as Australasia.

  ‘You're a dark horse, Walter. I didn't think you'd set foot outside London.’

  Beside him his colleague swelled with pride, though his eyes were still beholding lost faces.

  ‘Me? I did two tours with the Knights of Rhodes, boy: just as an auxiliary, of course. One more and I'd have got my plot of land. In another world I'm tilling the Bosphorus soil, not stuck here. One of me sons - well, grandson maybe - might have made knight!’

  Samuel had no more expected this than to be paired with a Mameluke. Here was opportunity. Having burst beyond his own first horizons he now saw no reason to ever limit them again. If knowledge beckoned from nearby he'd seize it, since there was always the chance it might be profitable.

  He little dreamed then how well chosen that word was, or how profitable their idle time-killing might be.

  ‘So, what's it like out there then?’ he asked.

  Walter tried to recollect. It took a while.

  ‘Good wheat country, if you're left alone to grow it. And there's plenty room: lots of ruined places. They say Saxons fled there after Hastings, so maybe the castles were theirs. We repaired some – had to. ‘Cause you're alright near the coast or beside one of the citadels: the best and earliest grants of land are there. Further in you learn to plough with one hand.’

  ‘A?’

  ‘The other has to hold a musket, boy: or a rifle if you can afford it. That's what the Crimeans hand out to the Tartars, so they can raid and pick us off from afar without us so much as seeing 'em. 'Course, them Crimeans, they're clever: advanced like, for all they're pagan - good with cannon and rifles and such. They churn out more than we can from their wicked factories. And their women bed with other women and the men drink, only meeting to breed - or so they say. I never saw none: they always paid the Tartars to fight us.’

  There was something in that speech that fixed grappling hooks in Trevan’s mind, refusing to go away. At first he thought it was the intriguing allegations about Crimean social life, but those images soon palled. Not even a massive explosion from Reading-way; a powder store or rebel bastion perhaps, could distract him from the nagging thought that he'd just heard something... important.

  Finally, when they were checking in their weaponry at duty change it came to him. He'd doggedly teased out the one useful thread in a blanket of moth-eaten memories.

  ‘Walter,’ Samuel asked swiftly, ‘'fore you go: what is it that’s so special about these… rifles?’

  U[U[U[U[U[U[U

  ************

  '... therefore plain duty and Christian prudence, if not inclination, requires that I mention, as concisely as may be, of the transmogrifying process applied to the common arquebus or musket, named ‘rifling’ by those few artisans who can perform it - hence 'rifles'.

  I have not troubled my chivalric sensibilities in undue probing of this regrettable innovation, but am made resolute by the sad recognition that what is learnt cannot be unlearnt. The gentleman studying the warlike arts may meet this ignoble weapon and ought to be aware of it even as he deplores its being.

  Evidently, a screw or spiral precisely milled within the projectile tube imparts additional vigour to the deadly missile. The gun may therefore be shortened and lightened. It can even be reloaded whilst the shooter is prone on his belly like a serpent. These are the facts, as I myself have witnessed, and they must therefore be accepted as G*d's inexplicable will.

  The trick has been known since Reformation-Devastation times in Christendom, and in the dual Caliphates soon after. In the hands of game-keepers and huntsmen (who have excuse to wound from afar) 'rifles' have long been employed in the control of beasts and vermin - of both the two and four legged variety. To that extent no cavil may be raised.

  The more 'progressive' minded commander may mock me but I stand firm with the great generals of old in deprecating the distant kill. If life must be taken it should be at eye-to-eye and breath-to-breath length so that the magnitude of the deed is clear. I concede that the time-hallowed bow and javelin thus also stand condemned, but stoutly maintain that the gunpowder devil speaks loud as an evil of a different magnitude. The longbow and the spear require healthy brawn and acquired skill in their use, whereas any ill-bred runt may strike down a far-off better with a musket. This 'rifling' development permits a still more cowardly strike and is Satan's shoulder following his cloven foot thrust in the door of our turpitude.

  Fortunately, Christendom, save at its crusading edges, has been at peace for two centuries. Likewise, our musselman cousins, sharers at least in the Abrahamic monotheistic faith, are at an understanding with us and pose no threat. The European armies are thus well up to their needful tasks without recourse to a sinful 'arms race'.

  These 'riflemen' are therefore thankfully few and resort to sniping at unwary enemies from craven concealment. Should one be captured the traditional expression of disapproval of their black art is the removal of both hands. They may then go a-begging for the remainders of their miserable lives, and thus reform others by example.'

  And as for cannon....’

  'At the Altar of both Mars and Christ - being an instruction in the ethical pursuit of war: required preliminary reading for gentlemen volunteers of sun
dry Christian nations in the service of His Most Excellent Highness, The Holy and Roman Emperor Joseph IV.'

  By Pascal Gudarian. By grace of G*D, Imperial Commander of the Varangian Guard, the convert Turks and Croat hussars.

  Belisarius Press. Constantinople. The year of our Salvation 1933.

  ************

  cHAPTER 9

  When the first prisoners were delivered the officer of the Watch was drunk. He usually was well gone by midday, but Samuel ensured it by baiting the guardroom with a bottle of brandy. It was snatched up, beheaded and gargled down in short order. Soon enough, the shift commander had discovered the secret of the universe and was trying to enlighten his men. Then, worn out by that exertion, he departed to dreamland.

  Samuel dutifully took the reins. In fact he insisted on it and no one dared argue. It had all the appearance of keenness, selflessly volunteering to handle the headachy business of the Reading survivors. Few, if any, had been looking forward to this grim departure from the leisurely routine. Up on the ramparts they observed them coming from afar, despairing human cattle drawn out of the still burning city. Their regular army and Crusader escorts were not gentle and careless of what London thought of them. Several times Samuel saw a slow or troublesome captive dispatched. One whole group was blasted with blue flame by a sorcerer priest and danced for what seemed like ages before they died. Samuel had the privilege of introduction to that scarred, hot-eyed 'Father Oakley' at the handover, and got to shake the hand that had killed. Afterwards, he took a break to scrub his fingers raw.