Chapter 8
Noll
A song in a language he had tried to forget. The smell of blood. Pain that came in like a huge, slow wave.
He was trapped in a tiny room. Stone and wood. Rust on the walls. Damp on the floor, seeping into his bones. Above, a tiny window.
His hands were tied. His head was ringing, a horrible pressure throbbing around the right of his skull, behind his eye. His mouth tasted of blood and dirt. He spat. One of his own teeth fell out. It sat glistening whitely on the half-obscured floor like a star.
‘Noll.’
The voice invaded, clambering in through the window. The room shifted, blurred.
‘Noll!’
There was a hand gripping his arm. He turned to look at the person shaking him, but his face faltered and swirled.
‘Wake up!’
With a horrendous groan, Noll rolled onto his side, his eyes cracking open.
The room was gone. He was back in the tiny loft that had served as his living space this past year or so. Beside him, kneeling at his side and already fully dressed, Pepper was shaking his arm.
‘Good,’ he said, finally letting go. ‘Get up. You’re to see John, remember?’
Noll blinked sluggishly as the memory dragged itself across his mind. Yes. John. He had sent one of his boys to summon Noll a few days ago. There would be consequences if he did not go.
He stretched out on the cot. His arm twinged, the tight skin sending a bone-deep pain shooting down to his fingers. He shook out the feeling as he sat up, the world slowly coming back to him as the curtain of sleep lifted.
Pepper stood up and began to busy himself around the room, combing out his messy hair and chattering.
‘What do you think John wants with you?’
Noll scratched at himself and stood, kicking the bedclothes aside. ‘Lord knows,’ he grumbled, tugging on his tunic. ‘It would be far too easy for him to simply tell me.’
He walked over to the window, leaned out, grabbed the canvas sack hanging from the sill and heaved it inside. It was growing worryingly light. Hopefully John would have good news for him – perhaps another job – and he’d be able to fill it again before the day was out.
‘Here.’ He handed Pepper the last of a loaf of bread, followed by an apple. ‘Eat.’
Pepper hesitated for a second – glancing surreptitiously at the meagre remains Noll had left for himself – before tearing into the food.
He was too skinny, Noll thought vaguely, as he quickly saw off the last of a hard chunk of cheese.
He was short, too – far too short. Noll supposed that was the effect of living rough and eating too little for too long.
Pepper was around nineteen years old – at least, they assumed this was the case, as neither were sure of the exact date of Pepper’s birth – but was reedy and stick-thin.
With luck, Noll’s fortunes would change, and he would be able to keep him safe and warm and, most importantly, fed.
Pepper’s own pitiful wage was not enough.
Perhaps once they had the means Pepper would catch up with his peers.
Although that, too, was risky. Pepper’s slim stature and stunted growth was a boon that would not last forever.
Noll rummaged through his pack, skimming his fingers over his meagre possessions: a dagger, a coin purse, the package he’d picked up two days prior, a bone comb, and his clothes.
He quickly turned out the contents of the purse into his hand. A ring fell out with them.
He’d kept it all these years. He’d told himself it was because he could sell it. But he hadn’t. Even in the worst depths of poverty he hadn’t, not even when he was injured and convalescing, when he’d needed the money most.
Something had forced him to keep it. Doubt, he supposed. Hope. Stupidity.
He shook those thoughts from his head, and without hesitating any longer poured both coins and ring back into the purse.
Once he was ready, they headed out. The city’s streets were thick with people, shouting in English and French and getting in each other’s way.
He pressed himself close to Pepper’s side, a wall against the crowd.
He looked away as they passed the pillories.
He easily could have known the man within them.
‘Alms, sirs, please—’
Noll hesitated. There was a man slumped against the wall of a nearby building. His skin was wrinkled, loose on his bones. He was coated in dirt and God knew what else. His eyes were clouded.
Noll didn’t stop to think. He reached into his purse, pulled out a coin, and handed it to the old man.
‘Why did you do that?’ Pepper demanded, once they were out of earshot. ‘You have nothing.’
Noll shook his head. ‘He has nothing. Now he has a little more.’
When Noll had first arrived back on English shores as a penniless escapee, he truly had nothing – nothing but the clothes on his back.
Even his name wasn’t his anymore. He’d cast it aside like he had everything else, forced to give it up.
Those first, hard months, he’d turned not to begging, but to stealing.
He could have charmed people into handing over their money willingly, but through thievery he could gain far more than they would ever have given through charity alone.
And besides, it was easier to steal – easier on his pride, and a soothing balm to his anger. He had been abandoned by those who loved him, those who had the money and comfort that he no longer did. Those who could have saved him but had chosen not to.
He was aware, with every purse he stole or ring he slipped from a finger, of how many people were worse off than himself.
It was why he had taken Pepper under his wing.
It was why, even now, he would toss a coin to a blind old man begging in the street.
At least one of Noll’s eyes still worked, after all.
It was his mother’s heart still beating in his chest. Even when he was very young she had made him see those less fortunate than them; those not tied to wealth by marriage and blood. She was endlessly charitable, and where his brothers saw giving alms as a dull obligation, he had taken it all in.
She would have given the beggar a whole purse full of coins. But she would have had a purse of coins to give. Noll did not.
She was dead now.
Noll had agreed to meet John in his safehouse, the place he conducted all his business: a tavern-cum-brothel on the edge of town. They hurried inside, greeted swiftly by a pretty girl in a yellow hood. He gave her John’s name and his own, then watched as she hurried off into a back room.
‘I ought to get to work,’ Pepper said, glancing around. ‘Do not argue with him.’
‘Why would I do a thing like that?’
‘Because you’re a damn fool. Come and find me when you’re done. I wish to know what this is all about.’
With a squeeze of Noll’s arm, Pepper headed away towards the wooden staircase that led to the rooms upstairs.
Despite Noll’s initial concerns when they had landed in the city just over a year ago, Pepper had flourished in the business.
He’d taken on jobs as and when he was needed: serving customers in the tavern, cleaning bowls and mugs, wiping down tables.
He’d made a name for himself with the girls in the brothel, too, always fetching and cleaning and carrying or – on occasion – threatening boisterous clients.
His latest role, which Noll still worried over, was far more active.
But he had a set of skills – a set of tools – which made him perfect for certain clients.
Between it all, he was making just enough to scrape a living; not enough to thrive, but enough to mean he didn’t have to follow Noll down the path of thievery and banditry.
Still, Noll would have preferred if he could have provided for them both.
In the years they’d known each other, he’d watched Pepper grow from an anxious boy into a confident – if angry – young man.
He was his brother in all but blood, and while Pepper seemed perfectly happy getting his work on his knees, Noll still couldn’t help but wish there was more he could do for him.
Not that he ever told Pepper that, of course. It would lead to an argument that Noll was certain to lose.
After a few minutes, the girl returned and directed for Noll to follow her into the back room.
It was near empty, save for a handful of tables and there, in the corner, John.
He was a large, imposing figure, his hat pulled low, his tunic straining against muscles he made no attempt to conceal.
On the table in front of him sat a full mug and, Noll noticed, a shining knife. He glanced up as he entered.
‘You came,’ John said.
‘I came. What have you got for me, John?’
‘Just a little job.’
Noll took the empty seat opposite John as the girl saw herself out.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘Onto business so soon?’
‘I would rather get it over with.’
‘Very well. I’ve received a proposition. One with a very generous compensation.’
‘Oh?’
‘It is a truly tragic tale. My heart bleeds for this poor family …’
‘And their money, I would wager.’
John grinned horribly. ‘Perhaps.’
‘And what do they want? Riches restored? An heirloom returned?’
‘If only it were so simple. They need a certain man … dealing with.’
‘Dealing with?’
‘Killed.’
Noll stared at him, aghast. ‘I am not a hired killer,’ he said firmly. ‘I am a thief.’
John rolled his eyes. ‘You may claim that all you like,’ he said, ‘but you fought in France. You were with that band of yours for years. You’re telling me that a man like you has never gotten his hands dirty in this manner before?’
‘Once or twice,’ Noll conceded, ‘but not like this, not for pay.’
‘Then you shall be learning something new.’
‘Why do they want him dead? What has he done to them? John, I cannot kill a man. Not without good reason. And no—’ He saw John’s eye twinkle. ‘Money is not a good reason. Tell me.’