Fair Blows the Wind

by Louis L'Amour

  He stared at me, but was not angered. He looked at me with contempt. “You talk too much,” he said. “I may slit your tongue.”

  “You once tried that,” I replied cheerfully, “but though I held back and gave you every chance for exercise, nothing came of it but a little dust and sweat.”

  “You held back?” He motioned for a waiter. “I should have killed you then.”

  “Aye,” I agreed, “for you cannot do it now unless you set some of your thieves upon me.”

  “I’ll not do that,” he replied. “You I want for myself. It is a pleasure I have long promised myself.”

  The ale came and quickly. The waiter’s eyes were round and frightened. He had no doubt with whom he dealt, I could see that.

  Leckenbie drank, ignoring Tosti. “What do you here?” he asked.

  “Like you,” I said, “I came seeking my fortune. My fortune,” I added, “not somebody else’s.”

  It bothered him not at all, so I desisted. Taunts meant nothing to him, for as I was to learn, he simply did not care.

  “A poor place to seek a fortune unless you have one,” he said. “But they be recruiting men for the sea, if you’ve the stomach for it.”

  “Another time,” I said. “Now I am for London. I shall find a bit to do around here and see what comes.”

  We talked then, quietly and easily as though we had not been enemies, although I had no doubt of what was in his mind, nor was he trying to ease my fears or entrap me. He was, I suddenly realized, hungry for talk of his own country, and so I spoke of it, and of Scotland.

  He listened, his eyes wandering the room the while. “Will you have something?” he said suddenly.

  “Of course,” I agreed, “as I do not mind eating with a man I mean to kill.”

  He laughed, with genuine humor. “Ah, I like your nerve!” He looked at me closely. “Or is it bravado? Are you putting a face on it?” He looked again, and seemed surprised. “You know, I really believe you think you can do it. I really do! And after what happened back there.” He motioned the lad over again and ordered for us three, and ordered well. “I was about to run you through,” he said, “when you backed off the hill. I was sure it was an accident, but mayhap it was a trick, a device to escape me.”

  “Escape you?” I spoke lightly. “Rafe, I simply did not wish to kill you. I like a fine bout with the blades and you afforded me the best exercise I’d had in a long time. I had no wish to kill you then. I was saving you for another bout. Soon, I hope. I grow rusty.”

  He chuckled. “I almost like you, damn you,” he said. “Well, eat up. It will not be tonight, and not here.” He looked across the table at me, one thick hand resting on its edge. “Odd, that you should choose this one. The one place where even I dare not kill you.”

  I was puzzled. Why not in this place? I wondered. What was there about this special place that made him draw back? Yet I did not ask the question. If he was mystified I wanted him to remain so.

  “It is comfortable,” I replied cheerfully. “They do be most friendly here.”

  “Aye, they would be. There must be more to you than it seemed that day on the moors when I took you for a mere vagabond.

  “Not many come here, you know, and fewer are allowed to stay. I wish I knew why!” His tone was petulant. “It is a mystery, yet the word is all about. No trouble here! None!”

  “You could chance it,” I suggested.

  He shook his head. “No, I’ll not. There is a power here, and I’ve a wish to command it. But first I must know from whence comes the power.

  “Is it the Queen herself? I think not. Some secret papist group? Again, I think not. Nor is it a place sponsored by some great noble. I’ve worked out that much, but every thief and cutpurse in London knows to leave this place untouched. I must find out why.”

  He looked quickly at me. “If you tell me, I will pay, and pay well.” He grinned with thick lips. “I might even let you live.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, and unwittingly hit upon it, “they do not want attention. Perhaps they wish to exist quietly and without notice, content to be as they are.”

  He glanced at me. “That might be it…but why? That is what I must know…why? And I must know, too, who comes here. And also how it is that you yourself are here.

  “And you could tell me if you wished,” he said, irritably. “How does it happen that you who are just come should be allowed here, and I who am known to all London am not?”

  His doubts aroused my own. Why was I here? Who was Jacob Binns?

  CHAPTER 19

  ALONE IN MY room I took myself to my desk and began to think on what I might write to earn a penny. Sure, and it was no writer I was nor intended to be, yet many of those about me were no better, and I at least had command of language and some memory for tales heard.

  In my grandfather’s time there had lived an Irish thief and vagabond of whom many stories were told, yet I dare not raise questions by making him Irish. Nor was England in any mood for an Irish story when all was going badly for them there. So I made the man a gypsy and, using a little information learned from Kory and my own roadside experience, I put together a tale. And as the street name for a rascal was a damber, I called my story The Merry Damber.

  It was written hastily but from stories long known, strung together by means of the road itself, and of that I knew a good bit. I wrote the night through and by the first light of dawn I had completed my story.

  With a faint light already at the window, I lay upon the bed and slept, content that I was done, yet not knowing whether what I had written was good or ill.

  There was unease in my mind that went beyond the writing, and when scarcely an hour had passed in sleep, I was awake, brushing my hair and considering where I might deliver my story in hope of payment. The unease lay not in the story or the writing, but in the secret of this inn, and of the man Jacob Binns.

  Where was he now? Was he sleeping? Or was he at large upon the town on some secret business, for he seemed to have no other?

  Descending the stair to the common room, I found Tosti Padget there. He noticed at once the roll of manuscript.

  “Ah? You have been at it.” He looked at the roll again. “It is a lot.”

  “I worked all the night. Do you wish to read it?”

  “No,” he replied frankly, “and mind you show it to no one but he who might buy. The others do not matter. Most people are not fit to judge a thing until it is in print, and only a few of them then. If they want more, it is good, and if they talk about it among themselves, it is better. I had rather have one story talked about in an inn or over a campfire than a dozen on the dusty shelves of the academies.

  “You may well ask, if I know so much, why I am not writing successfully…well, I know what should be done, and I can talk well of it. But,” and his tone was suddenly bitter, “I have not the will to persist. I tell myself I shall change, but I do not. I try to hold myself to a schedule, but I am diverted by the flights of fancy in my own mind. I dream of it, want it, talk of it, think of it, but I do not do it. Writing is a lonely business and must be forever so, and I am a social being. I want and need others about me and the loneliness of my room is a hateful thing.”

  “One can be alone anywhere,” I suggested. “The quality of solitude is in the mind. If you wish people about you then write here, or in some other tavern, or in many of them, but sit among people only isolated by your mind.”

  “I have tried that,” said Tosti Padget. “But my friends gather about me, they wish me to join them at games or walking after the girls, or they wish me to come along to another tavern where they gather with their friends.” He paused, then shrugged. “They scoff. They say I should come along and write another time.”

  “They drink in taverns,” I said, “and twenty years hence they will still be drinking in taverns, no longer so bright a
nd cheerful, no longer so friendly, only grown morose and sour with years and disappointments. As for their scoffing, the Arabs have a saying: ‘The dogs bark, but the caravan passes on.’ ”

  Tosti stared gloomily into his glass, perhaps because it was empty. I ordered another round and wondered how long I should be able to do so. Yet I liked him. To me he was a window upon a world of which I knew too little.

  We talked then of people about London, of those who came and went, of possible sponsors to whom a writer might dedicate a book with some hope of pension or remuneration.

  “To whom,” he asked me suddenly, “will you dedicate this? And what will you write next?”

  Who, indeed? I knew nothing of those in London, and it went against the grain to curry the favor of some great man, yet all did it, and it seemed the only way to modest success. Nonetheless, my nature rebelled against it. At the same time an answer came to the second question.

  Rafe Leckenbie!

  To gather what was known about him and his activities would be simple enough, and then to expose him for what he was. He had come into London and like a great leech had fastened himself upon it and now was sucking it dry. True, he was as yet only one of many others, but superior in intelligence and with connections in high places, he was rapidly advancing to a position of control.

  But first I must sell what I had already written.

  With morning I donned my best and went forth, to seek out Richard Field or some other printer, carrying with me the roll of foolscap on which I had written The Merry Damber.

  Field was young. He had but lately married the widow of the man to whom he had been apprenticed and was ambitious as well as shrewd. If I failed with him, there were others. All belonged, as indeed they must, to the Stationers’ Company, incorporated in 1557, and none was allowed to practice the art of printing unless he was of that organization. Each publication must be licensed by the government, and strict control was maintained over what was published.

  Field’s shop was in Blackfriars and I made the best of my way there. He was opening the door when I arrived. Young though I knew he was, I was startled by the fact that he was scarce older than I. He looked quickly at me and then glanced at the roll of manuscript under my arm. “You are early about,” he said, not unpleasantly.

  “Some call upon heaven when they arise,” I replied cheerfully, “I call upon Field.”

  “What is it then?”

  “An account of cozenage and chicanery along the highroads,” I said.

  He opened the door and waved me inside. “And have you knowledge of such things? You look the gentleman.”

  “I have some experience of swords,” I said, “and one teacher was a gypsy. He told many a tale. Others come from people along the way.”

  “Sit you.” He glanced at me. “Will you have a glass?” Then shrewdly he said, “You are Irish?”

  “I am lately from the Hebrides,” I said. “I am sometimes taken for Welsh.”

  “No matter,” he said pleasantly. He picked up my manuscript and glanced at it. “Well, you waste no time. Into the story at once.”

  He read on, and I offered no comment, and did not interrupt. “Perhaps,” he said, after a bit, “perhaps.” He looked up at me, suddenly, sharply. “Who directed you to me?”

  “I believe it was Robin Greene…or perhaps Tosti Padget.”

  “Ah, Tosti,” he shook his head, “much talent but no perseverance, and that is the truth of it. He writes well but finishes very little. He chops and changes.” He looked up at me. “My old master, George Bishop, used to say that writing was not only talent, but it was character, the character of the writer. Many are called, he would say, but few are chosen, and it is character that chooses them. In the last analysis it is persistence that matters.”

  He put down the manuscript. “There is something here we can use. It is light, gay, witty, and it smacks of the road.” He looked at me sharply. “You say you know the road?”

  “Somewhat.”

  “Ah? Yes, I suppose so. I am myself from Stratford. I often watched the gypsies there, and the peddlers.” He tapped my manuscript. “This rings true.”

  “You will buy it then?”

  “A moment! Do not hasten too swiftly. You need money?”

  I shrugged. “I do not need money, not at the moment. I do want money. Much money.”

  He smiled. “There is not much in this. Writers about London are a starveling lot. A good playwright such as Master Robert Greene, whom you mentioned, he will get but five or six pounds for a good play. And he, along with Kyd, is at the top of them.”

  “I was not thinking of continuing a writer, yet I have some other things. Do you know Rafe Leckenbie?”

  He sat back and stared hard at me. “Aye, and who does not who knows aught of the streets? I know him not, but of him…yes.”

  “I know him. What would you say to a complete revelation of his activities? All the plots and machinations of the man.”

  “You know whom you deal with? Leckenbie is no catch-penny rogue but a thoroughgoing rascal. He’s into river piracy and the lot.”

  “And a devil of a fine swordsman, too.”

  “Ah? I have heard of that, but doubted it. There is a rumor that he killed a gentleman in a duel shortly after he first appeared in London, and another one in Kent.”

  “I know nothing of that, but he is a superlative swordsman.”

  “You speak from experience?”

  “I do.”

  “Yet you live?”

  “That was long ago, and in another place than this. I was not as skillful then as I now am…yet I narrowly escaped.”

  “I see…yet you would dare this? He would set his men upon you. Not upon me, for I am of the company and no man would be such a fool. Yet I fear for you.”

  “Let that be my worry.”

  Field tapped his fingers on the manuscript. “Very well then. Two pounds for this, four pounds for the Leckenbie story—if it is true or nearly so. But do not think I shall pay so much again, for there are not many stories of the likes of Rafe Leckenbie.”

  “I understand.”

  He paid me two pounds and I took it gratefully. It was a goodly sum for the time, and evidence that he thought well of what I had written. Yet I was not misled, for the stories I had written down had been told and retold by generations of Irishmen and belonged to all who heard them. They had stood the test of time. Yet never had they been in print, for the Irish were not permitted to publish. They were tales told in taverns. I might do another as well, for there were many such stories, but that would probably be the end of it unless I could enrich my knowledge by talking to road people and gypsies.

  Where was Kory? I wondered. I could use him now, and could pay him, too.

  Tucking away the two pounds with my small store, I went back to the inn, loitering along the way. I saw nothing of anyone I knew, yet I did see a rogue or two who seemed to be following me.

  Were they Cutting Ball’s men? Those of Leckenbie? Or both?

  For a week I loitered about the White Hart, the Red Lion, the Mermaid, the Three Tuns, the Golden Lion, King Harry Head, as well as the Bear and the Ragged Staff. I went from one tavern to the next, buying a glass here, or just sitting and watching, sharing a drink with some wandering rascal. But I was listening all the while.

  Usually, I just listened. If the soil seemed fertile I might drop the seed of Leckenbie’s name, and then sit back to hear what might be said. It was a way to learn, and I learned much.

  Soon I learned that Leckenbie directed the affairs of three stalling kens, or places where stolen goods might be sold, each in a different quarter of London. He also had several stables where horses might be let to pads, as highwaymen were called. He had a fist into everything, and he was making enemies all over London. Cutting Ball was not alone in disliking Leck
enbie or his ways. It was simple to see that he was a master scoundrel.

  Swiftly then, I wrote. It was not the whole story, certainly, but it was enough. I entitled it Rafe Leckenbie, Thieves’ Master and Master Thief. Then I hastened to Blackfriars and put it into the hands of Master Field.

  He looked at it, swore a little, and pressed on to read further. “I will take it,” he said at last, “but do you look to yourself, Tatton Chantry. Once this is on the street your life will be worth next to nothing.” He snapped his fingers. “Not that!”

  “Four pounds,” I said, “and I’ll wear a loose blade.”

  “You will have it,” he said, “but I fear for you.”

  And in truth, I feared for myself.

  CHAPTER 20

  NOW THAT I had come upon a means of earning a bit I did not neglect the pen, but my next two attempts failed of acceptance. These had neither the wit nor the novelty of my first successes. Yet it was about this time that the Leckenbie piece was published abroad.

  In a day it became the talk of the town. When I went to the tavern below, the place was a-buzz with it, and not knowing who might be the author, they were of one mind: that he had but a short life left to him, once Leckenbie saw the piece.

  Cutting Ball came hurriedly to the tavern. “What, Tatton Chantry! Is it you who have done this thing? You have destroyed him!”

  “That was my purpose, but we do not know yet what may happen. We can but wait and see.”

  “All London will be about his ears,” Ball insisted. “And to think that you have done this! A mere lad! And with a pen, too, and with no sword or mob or soldiers!”

  Yet that day went slowly by and nothing happened, nor were any of Leckenbie’s men seen about, nor on the second day. There was no move against him by the Queen’s men: there was only talk. On the third day, well armed and with Ball’s men about, I ventured into the street.