A Twitch in the Tale

The air was chill on Cheapside, thick with rank smells and the rumbling, cackling buzz of cartwheels, hooves and humanity. Richard shuffled slowly along the London street, head down, huddled in a grey cloak against darkening skies that threatened spits of rain.

He was not a comely young man, and it was a stretch to even say that his face was homely. A little corpulent perhaps, with weight carried on thick cheeks below a mop of lank brown hair. As he walked, his head turned from time to time to glance furtively at the whores that propped on streetside barrels and leaned obtrusively from windows with coarse enticements.

It was a guilty habit of Richard's to stalk these local streets with loins lit excitedly by their suggestions, but chilled by a twisted and confused knot of guilt, morality and, above all, poverty. It was ever the latter that sat upon his mind.

Greed had brought him to London, driven by the promise of streets paved with gold. Instead he found the streets paved with copper pennies and rats, rats that haunted his cheap accommodation and even now ransacked amongst the garbage gutters of the Cheapside street. To Richard they felt like a furry tide that threatened to overwhelm the city, and he loathed and feared them in equal measure. He wished that they could be rounded up and burned.

His purpose today was not titillation, but a final forfeit of his dreams of riches. He planned to leave the city. For the last two years he had served as an apprentice to the cloth merchant Edward Bafford, but as time wore on it became increasingly apparent that he could never aspire to be as rich and influential as someone like Bafford through hard work alone. Defeated and broken, Richard gazed up the road that would lead him from the city and thought bitterly of his master's words that morning.

*

They strode through the packing warehouse and Richard struggled to keep pace with the towering Bafford as he cast his eye speculatively around him. Richard appreciated the mingled glances of respect, fear and resentment that the warehouse labourers threw towards them, if not strictly at Richard himself. Mr Bafford stopped short abruptly and turned to pin him with a beetle-browed stare.

'There is a conversation that I have been meaning to have with you young Whittington,' he said. 'regarding your future in my employ'. The words bristled with meaning from his thick grey beard. Richard gawked at him nervously.

'You have worked diligently over the past two years,' he continued. 'I had hoped that some day you might even prove to be a worthy son-in-law. However, I don't believe that you will ever be able to be anything more than a lackey.'

The words stung, and Richard opened his mouth to protest but was silenced with a hammy finger and a stern glance.

'You simply don't have the heart lad. Your sense of business is sound enough, but you can't carry an edge of authority and I know that you're mind is elsewhere. I've heard about your little... excursions.'

Richard flushed silently and Bafford gazed down at him with a mixture of confirmation and disappointment. Bafford's Protestantism was a matter of great importance to him.

'Sir, I have worked so hard. I have plans, plans that could...'

'This is not a matter for debate Whittington', snapped Mr Bafford. 'You will continue to keep the books, but next month I intend to hire a new apprentice. That is the end of the matter'.