As he spoke, Rudolph heard other voices calling. A group of local men had entered the passage, and now stood eyeing the thief and Rudolph with grim-faced suspicion.
‘Wally? Are you all right?’
‘Look! That foreigner’s got a knife to him!’
Rudolf’s companion grinned. ‘I’m fine.’ Then, more urgently, ‘Quick! Let’s get away from here. And put that knife away, in God’s name! Do you want us both to hang?’
Chapter Three
Early that Friday morning, Hamelin woke with a shock as the tavern-keeper began rolling casks through his doorway. After sleeping all afternoon and night on the bench in the open air, Hamelin’s body had stiffened. His joints and muscles wouldn’t work, and he didn’t want to see what the world looked like anyway, so he lay back with his eyes screwed shut, trying to ignore the row until it was impossible to do so any longer.
When his eyes met the daylight it felt as though someone had slammed a ten-pound hammer against his head and he snapped them closed again. Someone must have rammed a woollen mitten in his mouth, he thought, but then he reasoned that it was only his tongue, swollen and befurred. Gradually he dared open his eyes again, and his skull seemed on the brink of exploding. The pressure was awful. His tooth was now only one part of a whole chorus of agony; his head felt like a boil which was ready to be lanced; and Hamelin would have been glad enough to provide a blade to any kindly soul who would be prepared to use it. Death had to be preferable to this.
It was only after he had drunk two quarts of water that he could think of making his way back to the mine. From the town, the hill looked utterly insurmountable, but the miner knew from bitter experience that the only cure for his particular malady was exercise. He’d feel a lot worse before he improved, but once the sweat began to pour from him, his recovery would be on its way. And then he saw old Wally up ahead, and he tried to shift himself to catch up with his neighbour.
‘Wally?’
The other miner’s face almost made him feel refreshed. Wally had been brawling: his left eye was closing, and he had a cut lip. Fresh blood had dripped onto his shirt. Hamelin was tempted to ask who he had fought, but Wally’s face didn’t encourage an enquiry.
Wally shot him a look, then grunted, ‘You’re up early, Hamelin.’
Hamelin gave a sour grimace. ‘Nothing much to keep me. No bed, no money. What else could I do?’
‘What of your wife’s bed?’
‘Hal bought me some beers and I had to sleep it off.’
‘It was me put you on your bench,’ Wally said shortly. He was preoccupied with his suspicions about Joce and what the man might have done to Agnes, all those years ago. He felt the weight of the coins at his belt. He could leave the area, he told himself. Go somewhere Joce wouldn’t think of looking for him. When the receiver learned that his pewter had been stolen, he would go insane with rage – that much Wally knew. Wally also knew what sort of a devil Joce could become when the mood took him: he had seen it happen before. Yet he didn’t want to run away with this money. It felt unclean, like the thirty pieces of silver which Judas was paid. It would be better for him to give the money away, all of it, and build a new life elsewhere. At least he had deprived Joce of it; that was a comfort.
‘You, was it?’ Hamelin grunted. ‘Nah, I didn’t want to go to my wife when I was in that state. I’ll go and see her later. We’ll know then.’
‘Know what?’ Wally asked. He wasn’t in truth very interested in Hamelin’s stories of woe, he had his own trials to cope with, but talking took a man’s mind from trudging onwards and the length of the journey.
‘My boy,’ Hamelin said hoarsely, and then the words stuck in his throat.
It wasn’t as though he was hugely fond of all the children; Hamelin loved his wife, and that took all the love he had in his soul, but there was something pleasing about Joel, his youngest. He was an affectionate child, mild-tempered compared with some of his siblings when they had been his age.
To Wally’s astonishment, Hamelin began to sob.
‘Christ Jesus! What’s the matter, man?’
‘It’s Joel. He’s dying. I don’t think he’ll be alive when I next see Emma.’
That same afternoon, Ellis the barber sucked at his own teeth while he studied Hamelin’s. It was calming to remind himself that he still had almost two thirds of his own teeth in place when he looked into other men’s mouths.
This was not going to be an easy one. He could see that right from the start, and was tempted to reach for his little leather sack filled with the tiny beads of lead which he had once bought from a plumber. This was his personal ‘sleep-maker’. That was what he called it, and it invariably lived up to its name, sending off any man against whose head he directed it, and yet this one had such a thick skull, Ellis was a little anxious about using it. He would have to give a hard blow to make an impression on this miner’s head.
‘Well?’
The growled question from the man with the obscenely swollen cheek made Ellis decide quickly. He reached behind him and took his wine flask from the table. ‘Master, it will be painful, so first drink this. It is a good, spiced wine and will soothe your spirits.’
Sitting in the chair, the man grabbed for it and upended it. Soon his Adam’s apple was jerking regularly up and down. He would finish the whole skin, Ellis thought – but it
