A Burnable Book

‘That’s right. “By kingmaker’s cunning a king to unking.” Do you see?’

‘Well—’

‘It’s plain as the shining sun, Nathan Grimes. Look in the glass. You’re to be the kingmaker, sure as I’m standing here.’

‘The kingmaker,’ Grimes repeated.

‘Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been at the centre of such great events,’ said the priest, lowering his voice. ‘You were on the bridge with Wat Tyler, Nathan. You walked right behind him. And I saw you myself on Blackheath, standing at Ball’s feet. You could have taken out King Richard at Mile End, with a cleaver or a long knife.’

Gerald felt a chill, finally understanding the priest’s cryptic talk. It had been four years since the Rising, when the commons of Essex and Kent, infuriated by the poll taxes and the harshness of their levy, had flooded London by the thousands, burning buildings, beheading bishops and treasurers and chancellors, imprisoning the young King Richard himself in the Tower and nearly executing him at Smithfield.

The butchers of London and Southwark had marched along with the rest, and Gerald could still remember the exuberance on the streets as word spread of John Ball’s sermon on Blackheath. When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? Words of hope, and a promise of a better life for England’s poor. Though things were now much the way they had been before the Rising, its wounds were still fresh, the city and the realm braced with suspicion of the commons. You could still see it on the faces of the beadles and aldermen, in the tense stance of lords and ladies as they rode through the streets, trading hostile glances with clusters of workers breaking stone, or lame beggars idling by the gates.

Now, it seemed, the talk of treason was back. That priest in with Grimes, he was trying to convince the master butcher to raise arms again, and this time have a real go at the king. He thought of the priest’s verses. By bank of a bishop shall butchers abide. Not one butcher, not Nathan Grimes alone, but butchers. So what did that mean for him, Gerald Rykener?

The scrape of a bench. Gerald turned his head so his eye was against the gap. The priest rose and clapped Grimes on the back. ‘This is fate, my son. It’s prophecy, as sure as the Apocalypse itself. God sees our futures and our glories in ways we mortals cannot, Nathan. This is yours. Embrace it, my son!’

Grimes sat there, staring at the far wall of his shop, kneading his swarthy chin. Gerald watched him, almost seeing the muddled thoughts in his master’s brain, like a rocker churning cream. Then the butcher looked up at the priest, a gleam in his eye. He stood, inhaled deeply, and nodded.

‘I’m in, Father.’ His nod strengthened as his certainty swelled. The priest stepped in and embraced him.

Gerald felt his stomach heave. He turned away, his eyes cast at the ground as he trudged back to the kill shed. He leaned against the rough board wall, pondering what he’d heard.

The butchers of Southwark. A new Rising. Knives and cleavers and axes and a crowd of meaters, massing over the bridge, intent on killing the very King of England. To what end? He shook his head, the answer as clear as his memory. A rain of arrows, the swish of a garrison’s swords, and it would all be over. A slaughter in the streets, the blood of the poor running between the pavers. Just like last time.

And who would the hangman come for first, once the king’s men discovered who sparked this certain treason? Gerald looked up, the fear clenching at his middle so he could hardly stand straight. Nathan Grimes, that’s who – and his two apprentices, all of them about as safe as the butchered veal calf hanging there before him.