The Oldest Sins

by etal

Summary:

‘Commit / The oldest sins the newest kinds of ways’ (Henry IV, Part II)

Hal in Eastcheap, lollards, bears

Notes:

• Translation into Русский available: Старейшие грехи by kullwahad

Chapter 1: Drunkard's Moon

John has been avoiding Southwark since the summer. He owes money at the Tabard and the George. A friendly scrap at the Boar's Head had ended with the landlord saying if he saw John’s face again, he’d have his balls and rename his pub the Dickless Knight.

But Beale’s been whining that there’s a new bear at the Bankside fighting pits he wants to see and a good bear is rare enough entertainment to warrant a visit over the river and taking the risk of meeting up with old friends.

The bear is named Sackerson. On his hind legs, he’s three heads taller than a man. When they arrive, the Keeper is boasting about Sackerson’s matchless exploits and how fortunate the London mob is to see him. He leads the muzzled bear around the pit and has Sackerson dance for them.

Scanning the crowd for potential trouble, John notices a group of young men over on the other side of the ring. They are distinguished by their obvious wealth and their obnoxious assumption of the right to the spot with the best view, where the ground rises slightly. He recognises one of them as George Cavendish, whose father had been a loyal soldier and beloved friend of King Richard’s until the turn of events caused him to become a loyal soldier and beloved friend of the usurper Henry Bolingbroke. He thinks another is a lesser Neville, one of the Northern waverers.

Beale slides in next to him, hands him a beer and mutters, “You seen? We’re graced today. The King’s son, no less,” nodding over at the knot of aristocratic tourists.

John looks again. He has to search the youthful faces until he sees Prince Henry behind Cavendish’s blonde head. John wonders that he hadn’t recognised him immediately. The Prince holds himself differently, perhaps, not drawing attention like the others, who want to be looked at and admired.

John has seen him once before, after Bolingbroke had been named King and John and the rest of Richard’s men had been ordered to choose: come and cheer at the coronation or forfeit everything you haven’t lost already. The boy Henry had been riding by his father’s side, a pale, grave lad, on a horse he was too small for. He had a good seat, upright and light, and only a sharp eye would have noticed the strain on his wrists and knees, necessary to keep the horse under his command.

He is tall now, but still pale and grave, like the sliver of a crescent moon. Dark hair loose around his face, blade-thin. A poet might be moved to say something about his eyes. They are pretty eyes. But for all of his thoughts of moons and blades, John is not a poet.

“Shall we try something?” Beale asks. He means, shall they try to deprive the young men of their heavy purses by thieving or inciting them to ridiculous bets. It would be as easy as winking but John is not in the mood.

“Nah, leave them be. I’ve enough enemies this side of the Thames.”

The aristo gang are there again when they come back to see Sackerson the following week, baying at a knot of dogs tearing themselves bloody. The Prince is still and quiet, looking about him. As John watches, he wanders away from the crowd to the gate, which leads to the river.

He is bored, John realises. They could slaughter every dog in London for him and he wouldn’t raise an elegantly-shaped eyebrow.

He calls for an ale and then makes it two, and carries them over to where Henry has settled himself on a bench, his back as straight as it had been on that horse at eleven years old.

He offers a cup and Henry gives it, and him, an appraising look. Close to, the Prince is softness and sharpness together, a blade with a smooth leather handle. His curling dark hair gives him the look of a knight from a romance, but his mouth is closed in the tight, sad line of someone who expects an insult, not a kiss.

“I thank you, no.”

“Oh, I’m not trying to poison you, your highness,” he bows, exaggeratedly. “Although I can’t swear that Moll’s ale won’t do the deed whether I wish it or not.”

The pretty eyes flicker with annoyance, or amusement. “And you are...?”

“Sir John Falstaff, at your service. And I swear on King Richard’s bones that the ale ain’t poisoned.”

Henry studies his face for a long moment then accepts the cup, and says, “You were of his company?”

“Until the end.”

“And now?”

“I come here to watch bears and hide from death.”

“All men must die.”

“Aye, and learn to bear it.”

The poor joke lessens the tension around the young man’s mouth, just a little. He drinks, then drains the ale in one and nods at John’s cup.

“Will you have another?”

“Why not? Let’s see if John of Gaunt’s grandson can drink like the old man did.”

“You knew my grandfather?”

“From a distance. I fought with him when we were routed at St Malo.”

Henry grimaces.

“It wasn’t his fault,” John says. ‘For all they said against him, he was a good man, good soldier. Might have been a good King.”

He says nothing about the current King. He sees Henry notice. Moll brings a new jug and John pours, then raises his cup.

“To England.”

They drink, fast, eyes on each other. A silent dare. Falstaff finishes first, slams his cup down, belches, and claims the remainder of the ale in the jug as his prize.

Henry wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Another?”

“Spare me,” John says, “enough of this piss. Come with me, and I’ll take you for a proper drink.” He sees Henry hesitate, look over at his companions. “Or does His Highness have to stay with his playmates?”

“Don’t… don’t call me that.” Even as he rejects the title he puts his chin in the air, imperious, here in the South Bank mud.

“Come on then, Hal the Commoner, “ John says, “let me show you round your new dominion.” He whistles for Beale and sets off, not looking to see whether the Prince is following, almost sure he will.

As they leave, George Cavendish comes running, his well-fed cheeks flushed under his thatch of blond hair.

“Your Highness! Henry! Where are you going? You shouldn’t stray too far away from us, it’s not safe.” He looks John up and down. “These streets are full of thieves and traitors.”

“I’m safe with you, am I George?” Henry says, stepping in front of Falstaff, his chin jutting up at that haughty angle again. “And Neville, hovering behind you there? What with him passing messages to his cousin Hotspur in the North, and you and your daily reports to my father, I’m as well-watched as I’m ill-wished. I’m done with you. Good Sir John, lead on.”

John can’t resist winking at Cavendish as they turn to go. Beale performs an elaborate wobbling bow, staggering backwards and nearly sending them all flying.

“If you need to find me tomorrow,” Hal throws over his shoulder, “send word to the bottom of the barrel.”

As they walk to the Tabard John keeps the Prince in view at the corner of his eye, motions to Beale to stay close to his back. If he’s noticed they’ll be mobbed. But Hal performs the same trick as he had at the pits, he slips through the crowd looking no different from any of them. Once your eye’s in, you can see the quality of his padded jacket and the gold thread at the throat of his shirt, but if you’re not looking closely he could be just another of London’s sharp-edged chancers, one of thousands of thin boys with quick tongues picking out their living on the streets.

Broad George, the landlord at the Tabard, has John up against the wall as soon as they’ve stepped over the threshold, a knife at his throat. A fistful of coins finds its way from Hal’s purse into his apron pocket and everyone is once again friends and the house is soon rocking with goodwill and noise.

They drink. They drink to England and they drink to Wales. They drink to the South, the East and the West but not to the traitors of the North.

Falstaff reenacts the battle of St Malo with Hal as his John of Gaunt, astride a barrel, and Falstaff appearing as himself. He creates a new ending where he liberates the town and is named Archbishop for his pains. Beale makes him a mitre from an upended pot and he leads a triumphal procession from the Tabard to the Boar’s Head.

They drink.

“Give me a riddle, Beale,” John shouts. “And make it filthy.”

“My pleasure, my Lord.” Beale takes up a stance on the table. “Here’s a good ‘un… lads, lads, catch hold!”

He sways dangerously until they lay hold of his ankles and keep him upright. “Right! You’ll never get this -
A vessel am I that’s a round as a pear,
moist in the middle, surrounded by hair,
and often it happens that water flows there.
What am I?”

“First guess to Hal the Commoner!” shouts John.

“We’re in the school-room are we?” says Henry, “I’m not so easily caught - the answer is: “I am an eye.”

“Nah mate,” says Beale. “It’s - “‘You’re a cunt’.”

A moment of silence. The company holds its breath. John’s fingers go to the hilt of the dagger in his belt.

Then Henry laughs out loud and Beale stamps his feet and everyone shouts for another. Beale holds his hand out to Henry and hauls him up onto the table and Henry lets Beale topple backwards.

“Try this,” says Henry. The crowd hushes. “I cannot be what I shall be until he that made me dies.”

Everyone guesses. A sword? Bread?

Beale tries, “A cunt?”

Falstaff calls out, “A prince.”

There’s another moment’s silence while everyone works it out and then they roar and bang their fists on the tabletops in approval and Hal is declared the winner. His prize is to pay for drinks for the whole house.

When they leave, the yellow moon is hanging low over the rooftops, fat and round as a pat of butter: a drinking moon, hung to guide drunkards home safe to their beds.

“Shall we send you home Sire?” John asks.

“I was to stay with Cavendish.” He stumbles, spits. Laughs. “George Cavendish, that piglet.”

John catches him by the elbow as he topples, holds him upright. “You can bed down with us if you want. We have a roof, more or less and floor enough for three, but it’s rough. And they’re going to chuck us out tomorrow.”

“Well then,” Hal throws his arm around Falstaff’s shoulders, “I’ll buy your roof and your floor. We’ll live there, we’ll drink and you’ll show me…” he weaves on his feet and waves his hand, at the muck on the street, at the stars.

“What do you want to see?”

“Everything.”

“Very well your Highness.”

“Don’t call me that.. I said.. I’m Hal, Hal the Commoner, of Eastcheap and I want to see everything.”

*

“What are we up to then eh?” mutters Beale when Hal has passed out on a bench back at the rickety house on Candlewick Street.

“Showing our new friend the sights.”

“But what are we up to?”

“If he’s still of the same mind when he wakes up tomorrow, he can help us settle with our friends along the Bank and mebbes keep this place for a while longer. If he’s in search of an education, we’re the very men to give it to him. We’ll let him indulge his wide-boy fantasies and he can pay for our drinks while he plays the fool around town.”

“He don’t seem like a fool.”

“Seeming’s their trick, Beale. They know all about seeming.”

He looks at the Prince slumped on the bench. For a second, John thinks his eyes are open but when he pokes Hal hard in the shoulder the boy whimpers and seems sound asleep.

He slings Henry over his back and drops him onto the straw mattress which serves as a bed and rolls out a mat alongside Beale by the fire. He calculates the potential profits and losses of the current situation and sniggers himself to sleep remembering the look on George Cavendish’s face as he realised he’d lost his prize.

Chapter 2: Common Pains

In the blear of the morning, Henry sends for the city clerk and the house is in his name by noon. It’s the Plantagenet way.

He writes to the palace at Eltham for plate and linen, and a proper bed, and John sets up a bill with Nell Quickly for ale and food. They drink to celebrate Hal’s new independence and when evening comes they roll into the street and head for the taverns.

“You’re not worried about what the court will say if word gets back about you drinking the Boar’s Head dry? Or your father?”

“Oh they know it all already.”

Hal nods over to the corner where a noisy game of dice is underway.

“The fellow with the brown cap and the bottomless purse is a spy, as was the man who shared the barge over the river with us. The beggars stationed outside the house are spies and the good lady hostess herself will be passing on anything useful she hears.” He grins, hectic and furious. “You see? My gilded cage can be reassembled wherever I go!” He slams the table and shouts, ”More, more! Drinks for the whole house! Drink til our bones are liquid and we’ll make it easier for the devil to swallow us whole.”

He’s good, John will give him that. Hal is playing out the worst parts of himself for an audience of one. He gives him a round of applause.

“Excellent performance your Highness.”

“You like it, Falstaff? It’s my brilliant plan.”

“What plan?”

Hal looks round, mock-secretive, whispers, “See, you’re the comic relief in my morality play - The Most Sorrowful History of Harry, the Drunken Prince. My father and all his toads already think I’m a waster, drinking and whoring my way around London, so that’s what I’ll be. Then when the right moment for my redemption arrives it’ll be a God-given miracle as I appear before the court sober and sombre and ready to rule!”

John spit-laughs his ale over the table. “That, my friend, is the shittest plan I ever heard.”

Hal shrugs, “worth a try.”

“Well, why you don’t start by getting in some wine and a couple of pies to give us ballast. Years to go before you've to become Henry the Boring.”

Hal might think he’s faking being a drunkard but he’s not faking the amount he actually drinks. He’s so pissed by the time the hostess throws them out that John has to half carry him back to the house. John tips him onto his bed and is going to stumble back to the stairway and his place by the fire, when it occurs to him that Hal has drunk so much that he might die, so he lies down at the foot of his bed, like a dog. The prince’s dog he thinks to himself, as the room spins around him.

They drink.

They drink.

They drink.

It rains for a week and the rivers flood. The Tabard closes when its cellars go underwater and then there are rumours of a resurgence of plague in Southwark, so they stay at home and have the ale brought in. Hal is restless, veering from argumentative to sullen to melancholic.

“Lonely in your bed?” says John. “I can bring you someone. A girl. Or a woman. Do you like them shy or wanton?”

“Shut up, John.”

“Or a boy? Is it that way for you, young Hal?”

That brings his eyes up, watchful and curious.

“You speak very lightly of mortal sin.”

“A girl then.”

He thinks about it. John has discovered that he likes to watch Hal think. You can see the thoughts on his face as his busy mind catches them, picks them over, adopts or discards them. He nods, once, determined.

John grins lasciviously in response and reaches for his cap.

“Falstaff,” Hal says warningly, “not too young. And only if she’s willing.”

“Oh there’s plenty willing, my lord. For your excellent figure, or at least for your gold.”

Depends what you mean by willing of course. John sends for Jane Courcey. Jane will be willing, but then Jane doesn’t have much choice but to be willing if she and her mother are to eat tomorrow.

She arrives as they’re lighting the candles against the evening dark and he shows her into Hal’s room without a word. She gives him a shaky smile as she passes by.

John goes to the Boar’s Head for dice and a jug of Sack, lets the bawdy jokes flow around him. He wins enough money to pay for another flagon but puts the price on the Prince’s bill instead.

In the morning, Jane’s step wakes him from his sleep. The boy they've hired to run errands has just brought the water so he’s able to give Jane a bowl to wash in.

“All well, Milady?” he asks her. It’s his pet name for her.

She smiles, a secret smile, the smile of a girl who has met a young man she likes at church, or at a fair, where he bought her something sweet to eat and complimented her hair and whispered in her ear.

“He was gentle with me.” She blushes. “And kind.”

“Milady,” he says, bowing her out.

Upstairs, Hal is fucked out and sleepy but ready to boast, happy to be teased. John lets him talk on - her pretty hair, his own enjoyment, lewd comparisons of London girls with girls of the country.

“Where does she come from, Jane? I couldn’t place her voice,” he props himself on one elbow and smiles, as if they are boys exchanging confidences in a dormitory.

“You didn’t ask?”

“There wasn’t much time for talking, old man,” Hal says, grins.

So John lets him have it: she is a lady, or was. The daughter of Thomas Courcey, a Richard loyalist, killed during Henry Bolingbroke’s campaign for the throne, his modest estate and honours stripped from his family by the usurper’s administrators. The Plantagenets cut the throat of Courcey's thirteen-year old son when the boy stood with his father’s sword at the gates of their house, while the servants melted away, leaving him there alone. Jane and her mother were tossed out of their home with the clothes on their backs. Her mother has been half-mad since, only speaking to itemise her losses and to tell anyone who will listen about the details of the linens she once had and all her good plate, stolen from her along with all the rest of her husband’s property. John had fought alongside Courcey for a season so when no-one else would help them, they had arrived at his door. Unfortunately, he was at that moment being thrown out of that very door with not a penny to his name and the threat of arrest following him everywhere. How is a girl to survive if there’s no-one there to provide for her? The best he could do was to introduce her to Nell Quickly, who keeps a reasonably clean house, and to wish her the best of luck.

Hal’s face has fallen as he listens to Jane’s history.

“Had things been different she might be sitting in some snug parlour, with a child or two by her, her lord husband returning from his hunt to see his pretty chicks. She would have had a household to command and only her good lady mother to trouble her days. Why, she could be as happy and chaste as your own sister, Hal. But a girl must live.”

Hal flies at him and they fight, Hal is scrappy and vicious but he’s no match for John’s weight and his knowledge of how to use that advantage, and he swiftly has him pinned down in an armlock, his face crushed into the floor and the heel of John’s hand between his shoulder blades.

“Down now, puppy,” says John, into his ear.

“Take back what you said about my sister,” Hal says to the floorboards,

“I didn’t say anything about that virtuous lady. I only observed that the fate of women is decided by the fall of men’s cards and not by their own wishes, and I say again: a girl must live.”

He smacks the fine white skin of Hal’s cheek with a fat kiss and heaves himself up with a last kick to his side.

“You must learn how to use the weight of your opponent against you, Hal. When he comes at you it is not enough to parry and dance, you must yield for a moment and then swing back in that second before he pins. It would do you good to listen to me.”

Hal is silent. He is still lying on his side where John left him, his eyes fixed, so John sits on the rumpled bed and eats the bread and drinks the beer he brought up for Hal’s breakfast.

As he’s swallowing the last mouthful, Hal says, from the floor, “I will tell Mortimer to divert £30 a year from my private income to Jane Courcey. John, you will be emissary to her. See that she and her mother are transported from London to some quiet town where they can live respectably.”

John looks at the curve of his thin back. If you walked into the room now you would see a sulking boy, lying in the dust. You would think Falstaff was the master and Hal the servant knocked down to the ground.

“Very good, my lord.”

Later, they are drunk.

The Boar’s Head is full, rollicking and roistering, a ship of fools on a tide of wine and Hal is the captain, steering them into the storm at full sail. He turns over a table when he loses at cards and then laughs in the face of his opponent with such maniac charm that the man can’t follow through with the punch in the teeth he was ready to throw.

John distracts Hal with fooling. He takes the aprons from the hostess and her girl and they play at ladies. Falstaff wraps the cloth around Hal’s head, in the French style, and pronounces him Catherine de Valois, the French Princess. It ends lewdly, with Hal face down on the trestle table and Falstaff pretending to tup him, in the English style.

They crawl home and somehow Falstaff doesn’t leave but crawls onto Hal’s bed, takes up his dog’s place.

Hal wakes in the night and pukes, fortunately out of the bed rather than in it. John laughs at him until he realises that Hal is crying.

“God, don’t look at me … don’t, John.”

John is at a loss but he does what he would do for any man in distress, any friend, and finds a cloth and cleans him up, puts his arms around Hal’s thin frame, feels his heaving sobs which are racking him through and through.

Hal retches again but there’s nothing left in him but spit and the words that come up laced with bile. “I dirty everything I touch. I … make everything rotten. Just like my whole line. All the rotten Henrys who came before me and all the ones who’ll come after.”

“You’re not to blame for your father, Hal.”

“... don’t talk about him. I try, but I’ll be just like him, I’ll bring you all to ruin.” He gives an animal growl, bites his own hand in agony.

“Hal…my boy. You drink like a girl and you’re shocking in a fight … but we know you, your friends know you, and you’re not a spoiler of men.”

Hal takes a shaky breath, barks a sob into a laugh. “Not you anyway. You’re ruined already...”

“Tidy me up then. Bring me to Court when you’re King. You can have a favourite like your great-great-grandfather had. Dress me in silk and feed me sweetmeats and make me your Gaveston.”

“How much would I have to pay for your favours?”

“Bottle of Rhenish and a barrel of biscuits.”

“Your price is going up then?”

He sleeps eventually but John lies awake, thinking of the hot lines of blood and gold that have led to a lost prince and a battered knight lying here together, tracing them all the way down to dawn.

Chapter 3: Drowned Honour

John doesn’t believe in Hal’s stupid redemption plan for a second. In fact, after the night with Jane, he suspects that Hal’s real intention is actually to die. Nothing could be easier: if he wants to drink himself to death in the Boar’s Head then John is his man. All his life he’s seen the nobles let the blood of common men pour through their fingers like river water until the fields of England are saturated with it. He tells himself that it will be a novelty to watch a Prince murder himself for once.

Hal gets thinner. John eats more. Now Hal is part of his household they can have meat every week and baskets arrive from the palace full of soft bread and sweet cakes and fruit. He and Beale have to eat it fast before Hal gives it all away to the children who hang around outside the house.

Some of John’s old crowd from the days of Richard roll into town and the tavern is in uproar from the moment they arrive. The talk quickly turns to the wrongs of the usurper and the tyranny of his rule. Hal might loathe his father’s Court but the Plantagenet red mist rises and eventually he launches himself at the leader of the group, Will Calthorpe, and knocks him to the ground, punching and clawing, and has to be hauled off by Will’s friends.

John roars with laughter throughout. ‘How many times? You must watch your flank, Hal. They won’t need to hire assassins to take you out boy, they could pay a kitchen maid in ribbons and she’d do for you by dinnertime.”

Word had come from the Court that afternoon that the King was ill, and wanted to see his son. The messenger hung round the door, plagued by the children that Hal feeds, until Hal had gone out and said something low and savage which sent him scarpering down the street.

“Why won’t you go?” John asked.

“I don’t care to.”

“Your father Hal….”

“... has doctors aplenty and all the obedient arselickers he requires. I’ll stay away.”

So by the time they get to the tavern that night he'd been spoiling for a fight. Seeing Hal try to take on the entirety of Will’s battle-toughened crew to defend a father and a crown he despises makes John feel sorry for him even as he laughs at him. He is such a boy still. John begins to suspect his belligerence comes from a confused place, that he's drowning by diving for honour and purpose in a world empty of both. John even finds himself thinking that perhaps it would prefer it if Hal didn’t manage to kill himself. He pulls him out of the fight by his collar and makes the peace with Will with another round of beer. Hal is still spiky and restless and the drink threatens to make him morose, so Falstaff fools him back into humour. He calls the crowd to be his Court and they play that Falstaff is Hal and Hal is his own father the King. Hal is a good actor, he gives King Henry a rasping, ruined voice, throws in a hunch and a clawed hand for good measure

“Abandon this wretched company Harry! That knave you pass your days with, this fat, foolish, sometime-knight - base in appearance, in morals so putrid that he dirties the gutters he rolls in. Good for nothing but drinking and whoring and” - as an aside to their audience - “I hear he isn’t capable of going so hard at either as he once was. Leave him and return to my good graces, you reprobate boy.”

“You don’t speak of John Falstaff, my Lord?” says Falstaff. He plays Hal as a lisping ingenue, a darling.

“Who else? A devil who sleeps only to rest himself the better to debauch in the morning.”

“Not Sweet Sir John! My dearest friend. The bravest and the best of England…”

“The very one! Leave that worthless dog, that sapless sack, that pustule on the arse of Eastcheap and come back to our favour and take your rightful place… beneath my boot.”

The crowd roars as John shuffles forward on his knees and Hal crowns him with an upended jug of ale.

When they make him King for real, they will cut his hair, John thinks, wiping the ale from his eyes, watching Hal hurl himself around his chaotic tavern court. The wild curls will be clipped, fall away like black embers from a fire. They will strip him and then dress him in his new King’s clothes. He will be transfigured and the boy he was will be hidden away.

Hal's low mood is still apparent the next day and he won’t have another girl brought to him, so Falstaff remembers the flicker of his eyes when he talked about a boy instead, and makes arrangements.

“Christopher.” He points across the crowded tavern at the man in the corner. Christopher is well-built and sandy-haired; he looks healthy and ordinary.

“Don’t tell me,” Hal mutters. “He was intended for the priesthood until my father’s men destroyed his family and tore up his books and sent him to the gutter.”

“Nah, you need have no fear about Master Christopher. He springs from three generations of Richmond thatchers and he could be safely perched on some pretty widow’s cottage as we speak, but he came to London because nature formed him already damned, he says, and he wants good company on his journey to the flames. He chooses his trade freely.”

Christopher looks across at them and John summons him with a jerk of his head.

They drink. John drinks hard, calls for more, laughs at the young men when they refuse. He watches Hal’s eyes tracking Christopher’s broad fingers as they flex round his cup. Christopher leans over the table and says something into Hal’s ear, and Hal blushes. The room reels and the scene shifts, like a puppet show, when the puppeteer shouts out “And now, a forest!” and you believe that is where the characters find themselves.

Hal is stripped to his shirt, standing by his bed. A trunk of clothes had arrived from Eltham Palace that morning. When they opened it, the smell of lavender and rosemary filled the room, the dried sprigs were laid between each layer of linen. The scent lingers, a tease of freshness in the room.

“Won’t you stay Sir John?” Christopher says. “Your taste runs in all ways I think.”

Hal is glittering, jagged. “Yes John, stay. We shall share as comrades do… “

“I won’t.”

‘Then watch.” Hal’s eyes pierce him across the room.

“That’s enough of you,” John says but he doesn’t leave. Hal shrugs and refocuses on Christopher who is peeling off his own clothes, folding them with the care of a man who doesn’t own a trunk of shirts smelling of lavender.

John is shocked when Hal drops to his knees. He hadn’t expected that he would want that. He thought… what did he think? That Christopher would be the one used and Hal would grab and pull and his father’s coins would buy him what he wanted. Instead, Christopher doesn’t hesitate and tips Hal’s face up with two fingers under his chin. When he slides his thumb over Hal’s mouth and pushes it between his lips like a mock Communion, Christopher is committing heresy and treason at once. He’s a brave man but perhaps the sight of Hal there, this Prince of England with his mouth open for a whore’s touch and all his considerable attention trained on Christopher’s face, is worth risking all the fires between Smithfield and Hell. John heats, as if those fires were singeing him already. Hal isn’t always beautiful. When he’s bad-tempered and hungover or on the frequent occasions when he’s puking his guts up in the stews he could be any scrap of Eastcheap nothing, but even on his roughest days, John will see him, lying in a pale and sulky heap on his bed, and be surprised all over again by how fine he is: how his skin, smudged and splotched though it might be, still glows; how his eyes, bloodshot and hollow, can burn across a smoky tavern room at him, the only thing worth looking at in the whole place.

And here, kneeling on the boards (his knees must hurt), his face calm and his mouth open, he looks like a boy saint waiting patiently for benediction or torture. Christopher takes hold of Hal’s head with those broad fingers wrapping round the back of neck and urges him forward so that his hard cock slides between Hal’s lips. Hal’s eyes shut, he shuffles forward; John sees his throat move. Christopher curses and fists Hal’s hair.

John reels, all that should be tipped upside down and undone, he stumbles backwards to the staircase, holding in his sounds because he doesn’t like to give anything away. He can’t stop hearing the wet noises from the room, Christopher’s gasps and his muttered curses.

In the morning, Christopher is up and gone early, Hal is lying arse-up on his bed: his shift hiked up to his waist. It should be undignified and ridiculous, and it is, mostly. John moves to cover him but he can’t help registering the facts of Hal’s body.

“I think….” Hal says from his pillow, “he took my purse.”

“How much?”

Hal rolls over, sits up, shrugs, ‘A few coins. Not worth bothering over.”

But John can see he is bothered. He sets out the bread and block of cheese he brought with him, puts a cup of small beer in his hand. John eats five bites to every one of Hal’s.

“He needed the money perhaps,” Hal says after a while.

John grunts. Everybody needs money, all the time. The King needs money. The bearkeeper needs money.

“You shouldn’t expect too much of whores Hal. But if you feel you’ve been wronged, I know where he’s likely to be.”

Hal shrugs. “He earned it. And my father’s money is stolen coin already. Let’s think of it as… redistribution.”

“Did he clean you out or has he left you enough to pay for my drinks today?” He shakes out Hal’s clothes and a handful of silver collects on the stained sheet. “That’ll do, c’mon, before I decide to put you to work where you lay, see if I can make enough from you to pay for a new pair of boots for Beale.”

Hal gives him heavy-lidded look. “Maybe that would be more fun than what they’ve got planned for me. I’ve no more say over what my body’s for than a whore does anyway.”

“Ah woe is him, poor prince! Nah, you’d never make enough to keep me fed.”

He holds out a hand, and Hal allows himself to be hauled up and out.

Chapter 4: Banish all the world

Notes:

just a reminder for the warning about animal cruelty and death. And general misery.

Slumped in a corner of the Boar’s Head, drinking more to pass the time than to be drunk, Hal ties and reties knots in a discarded scrap of cloth. John asks him what he’s thinking of. Hal says, quietly, “sin.”

John shakes his head. “The church loves to deprive us of our pleasures. To make a man feel that the pleasure of his body is a sin and the love he feels will send him straight to hell.”

“John, you and I know that a churchman is like an actor in a play. He will say whatever is required of him as long as he is paid. But Holy Scripture says…”

“Who knows? How do we know but what they tell us it says, in a tongue we don’t know, can’t read? A man should read the scripture in his own language, in his own rough and ready words and sound out the word of God in his own mind. And Christ says love your neighbour as yourself. Christ says we are all God’s children. All, mark you, not ‘some’.”

“I didn’t know you were a Lollard, John.”

“Aye well. I’m no scholar but I’ve read enough. The Book says we are all equal in God’s eyes. There’s room and board in His house for all and there’s grace for all, for Jane and Christopher and fat old knights who are good for nothing but drinking, as much as there is for My Lord Archbishop and all his churchmen.”

Hal’s dark eyes appraise him. “You should have been a preacher John.”

“Not I. They want me fighting, or drunk, or dead. A man like me thinking for himself, now that’s a dangerous thing for them Hal. Imagine if we all,” he gestures round at the slumped tavern regulars, “started thinking. Imagine if we heard the Gospel in a language we could understand and decided that what Christ commands is that we should share all we have, and tear down the rich man’s house to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Imagine if we began to think ourselves as worthy of salvation as the nobles. Imagine if we decided that we should make this Earth an image of Heaven, where we’d all be equal and all have a room in the mansion.”

“Heresy,” Hal says, mildly.

“Better to keep us on the march then eh? That’s good advice for a wise King. Better fighting than reading. Better drunk than thinking. Speaking of which, are we drinking or not?”

They drink.

“If you're a Lollard...” Hal begins.

“I’m not anything. I won’t join anyone’s crusade thank you kindly, I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime and I won’t die on a slow-burning fire in the marketplace with the Widow Quickly toasting her cheese by my flames, over whether Christ is in the bread, or out the bread, or like the cheese, between it.”

“Is it true,” Hal pillows his head on his bent elbow and looks up at John through his bedraggled curls, “that Wycliffe says that the Church teaching on the Sacrament is at fault? That the bread and the wine are not truly transformed?”

John shrugs. “You should know this better than most Hal. The wine is just wine,” he dips his fingers in his cup, sucks from them, “it’s in the imagination that it’s His blood. Like when a man becomes King. His body is still a body like any other. He must eat and fuck and weep. He feels pain and weariness.”

Hal toys with his cup and says, low, “and he will still die.”

“Aye, but - in the imagination of those who believe in him, he’s divine. People believe his touch can heal them, they make him King with their dream of him.”

He spans his large hand across Hal’s slim fingers. Hal lets them rest there a second then flips his hand suddenly, catches John’s beneath his and holds it down against the rough table with some force until John brings his elbow into play and the short sharp wrestle is over quickly.

“You can use that dream Hal. You can be your own kind of King, shape the crown to fit you. And you can decide what story they’ll tell about you or what they dream you are. Be a good King to your people. Protect them without tyranny. Build for them. Don’t just send them to die, son after father after son.”

“I can’t… there’s no end to it. I’ll be just the same.”

“You won’t lad, listen: you’ve been with us long enough now, you see we’re human enough and you don’t fool me anymore. Maybe at first but I know you now.”

“Well then you know I’m a drinker and a sinner, good for nothing.”

“No.” He holds Hal’s hand down again, flat against the table like he’s trying to squeeze the thought into him. “You’re a Prince of England. And you’ll be a good King, if you try.”

Hal is fighting the thought, John can see, pinning it down and setting dogs against it.

Then he says, “Are you my man John?”

“What would do you do with me if I were?”

Hal’s jaw clenches, he blinks, that strange torn look he gets. John can’t bear him looking so sad. Just as he has learned that he wants to keep him, John knows he will lose him. Like the Sacrament wine Hal must be double but John is a straightforward man and can only be one thing at a time. He’ll belong to Hal and Henry V both. He hopes they won’t split him in two.

That night, all the talk of sin hot in his ears, John prays, for the first time in a long while. He finds the words of the Lollard prayer, the one you would burn for speaking out loud in your plain English: “We poor men pray, Lord, give our King and his lords hearts to defend Thy true shepherds and Thy sheep from out of the wolves’ mouths, and give us grace to know Thee, that thou art the true Christ, the Son of the Heavenly Father. Lord we ask this now, for more need was there never.”

“For more need was there never,” he repeats to himself and thinks of his old friends and the hungry children at the door.

God, he thinks, he could meet on his own terms. The shape of God in his mind is something like a stormcloud, or a brazier fire, and something like his own father. The thought of Him brings a heavy atmosphere, like a hand gripping the scruff of your neck. John leaves off praying and imagines God coming into the tavern, ordering everyone around, demanding the best table. Christ, though, John has a soft spot for Christ. He knows his true prayer is not in the liturgy, it’s in the way his heart and his throat tighten when his mind softens and thinks on Jesus. He’s ashamed of the longing he feels, it’s unmanly, childish, but he wants what the prayer says: “the grace to know thee,” he says to himself. “The grace to know thee.”

The rains come again and the streets are a stew, a tide of swill. Hal seems not to notice. He steps over the stream of ordure as if it were a velvet carpet. Beale wants to go back to Bankside to dice and they lose everything in their pockets so that John has to steal it back from the winners and they slide away to hide themselves at the bear pit.

The crowd are excited because Master Dinsdale, keeper of the dogs at Eltham Palace, has brought Hercules, a mastiff of fearsome reputation, to fight the bear.

The dog fastens on the bear’s ankle and he stamps and roars but the chain prevents him from reaching it to tear it from him. Eventually, he sits and pulls until the dog releases him and he crushes its ribs between his paws.

The crowd boo. The fight was too short to satisfy them. They throw rubbish and vegetables at the bear and laugh when he roars and rushes at them until he’s stopped by the keeper’s whip.

John turns away, unwilling to witness Sackerson’s humiliation. He searches for Hal in the milling crowd and catches him over on the side of the pit. Hal is not watching the bear, his mind is already elsewhere. The strange drunken dream of these long months is wearing off. He has tried to make himself uncrownable and pursued that aim with true Plantagenent determination but the throne calls to his blood, he cannot help himself.

Word comes from the Palace again and this time Hal goes as he is bid. He’s gone for three days and when he comes back he doesn’t want to drink and John finds himself capering like a Fool trying to catch a King’s eye.

“Hal! How goes it at Court? Did you scandalise the Bishops? Drinks, drinks for the boy!’

John sounds mad to his own ears.

“No, thank you, none for me.”

John watches his face. Something has changed.

“So?” he says.

“I’ll be King by morning.”

“And mourning. I’m sorry Hal.”

John takes him by the back of the neck and bends to press their foreheads together. He wants to say, don’t make me leave you, don’t send me away, my heart.

Because, God forgive him, John would follow Hal into hell. He’d burn villages to the ground for him, salt fields, poison wells. He’d wrench the crown from a rightful King and murder the wearer so that he could place it on his Prince’s head. He would rise from his bed to a cold dawn in some godforsaken field far from home and muster the troops, lead old men and boys and his own friends to the battle line. He’d use every ounce of his rhetoric and his preacher-fire to send them to their deaths shouting for Harry and Harry’s England. He’d put his body between Hal and all the blades that will be out for him: the swordsmen of France, the back-stabbers of the Court, the sharp edge of Hal’s own self-loathing which might yet cut him the deepest.

John once had something to fight for, then nothing, and now he has nothing and everything, a mix which will keep him on his feet until his veins give up their last drop of blood. Nothing good can come of it for him. Hal might be a better King than his father but his father, on balance, hasn’t been a bad King. It’s just that Hal is right: all Kings kill what they touch and Plantagenets are greedy and want to lay their hands on everything within reach. But maybe the Hal in Henry can wrest some grace from the ruin and that’s worth the effort.

“I’ll send for you,” Hal says. That’s already a mistake.

“No, you mustn't Hal. You must deny me, say you don’t know me, turn me off even if I come begging.”

“Never.”

“You have to shake off the Southwark mud, go to them clean. I’ll make you weak.”

“Only ever stronger. Are you my man John?”

“Til death.”

He holds Hal’s face in his hands now, draws him an inch closer so that their lips are nearly touching, so they share breath, and says against Hal’s mouth, “Til death, my Lord.”

Hal folds his hands around John’s wrists and for a moment lets his weight sag against John and John stands square and takes it. He must remind him, a King should never let a man get so close, close enough for a knife into the ribs, for a kiss that would undo him.

“One last evening,” Hal says. “Let’s go to the pits. You can say goodbye to Sackerson.”

The bear is crouched in a corner, its head sunk into its chest. There are great rents up its side.

“They put his eyes out,” Beale says, sounding awed. “Blinded him, and he still killed all three hounds. Tomorrow they’ll put five on him. Master Dinsdale is coming with fresh dogs, to get revenge for Hercules they say.”

John watches the bear as it hunches in on itself. They have given it some meat and it eats, despite its wounds. It cannot help but try to keep itself alive even as it endures its pain. Why doesn’t it find some way to tear us all apart? he thinks. The chain, he answers himself, and the whip. And the meat. Wanting to live even when life is all pain. The bear will fight on in its darkness even when the agonising assault jumps at him from all sides and brings him down into the mud and shit of the pit.

He becomes aware that Hal is watching him, a quizzical eyebrow raised.

“What?” he says, gruffly. “I pity the creature.”

Then Hal is striding into the ring, with that queer step of his, which despite his slender form is the stride of a man who walks on land that he owns. He walks lightly, but as if the ground should shake beneath his feet.

“I’ll buy that bear,” he says to the Keeper.

“You wha’ mate?”

“I’ll give you ten pounds for it.” The onlookers gasp. It’s three years’ wages, double, triple that for most of them.

The Keeper is astonished but he sniffs like he can smell the money in Hal’s purse and shakes his head.

“Sackerson is my livelihood,” he whines. “How will I feed my little ones if I have no bear to show?”

“Fifteen.” Hal spits on his palm and holds out his hand. “My last offer.”

“What will you give me down?”

Hal hands over the purse, with its royal insignia.

“Here’s five. My man will come with the rest tomorrow.”

The Keeper’s eyes go round. “Then Sackerson is yours. Your...highness-ship,” he adds, uncertain.

Hal walks over to the bear, slumped in its corner. It may be asleep, or merely stupified, it doesn’t seem to notice his approach. Hal says something, too quietly for John to hear, draws his sword and drives it through Sackerson’s heart.

The mob yell in shock. The Keeper shouts out “Sackerson! My dear!” and runs to the bear’s side, skidding to kneel beside it. He puts his hands on the bear’s body and begins to weep.

Hal looks across at John and John nods, raises his cup for one last toast.