The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice Read Online Free PDF Page A

take long to find you a place. It’s the times, no one has food for an adult appetite in a boy who cannot do a man’s work.” After a brooding silence he spoke again. “When I was younger everyone said if we could only have a real peace and get rid of King Aethelred, the worst king who ever ruined his generation, then times would be good. We had invasion after invasion, Saxons, Danes, every bloody kind of pirate. Now finally we’ve a strong peacekeeping monarch in King Canute, but it’s as if natureconspires to hold us down. Great summer and winter storms do us in. Three years in a row crops have failed. Millers don’t grind grain, sailors stay in port. No one builds, and craftsmen are idle. It’s hard times, my boy. But I’ll find you a place, I promise.”
    “Thank you, Chief Carpenter.”
    Bukerel’s dark eyes were troubled. “I’ve watched you, Robert Cole. I’ve seen a boy care for his family like a worthy man. I’d take you into my own home if my wife were a different kind of woman.” He blinked, embarrassed by the realization that drink had loosened his tongue more than he liked, and got heavily to his feet. “A restful night to you, Rob J.”
    “A restful night, Chief Carpenter.”
    He became a hermit. The near-empty rooms were his cave. No one asked him to table. His neighbors were unable to ignore his existence but sustained him grudgingly; Mistress Haverhill came in the morning and left yesterday’s unsold loaf from the bakery and Mistress Bukerel came in the evening and left cheese in tiny portion, noting his reddened eyes and lecturing that weeping was a womanly privilege. He drew water from the public well as he had before, and he tended house but there was nobody to put the quiet and plundered place into disorder and he had little to do but worry and pretend.
    Sometimes he became a Roman scout, lying by the open window behind Mam’s curtain and listening to the secrets of the enemy world. He heard drawn carts go by, barking dogs, playing children, the sounds of birds.
    Once he overheard the voices of a knot of men from the guild. “Rob Cole is a bargain. Somebody should grab him,” Bukerel said.
    He lay there guilty and covert, listening to others talk about him as if he were someone else.
    “Aye, look at his size. He’ll be a great workhorse when he gets his full growth,” Hugh Tite said grudgingly.
    What if Tite took him? Rob considered in dismay the prospect of living with Anthony Tite. He wasn’t displeased when Hugh snorted in disgust. “He won’t be old enough for Apprentice Carpenter until another three years and he eats like a great horse right now, when London is full of strong backs and empty bellies.” The men moved away.
    Two mornings later, behind the same window curtain, he paid dearly for the sin of eavesdropping when he overheard Mistress Bukerel discussing her husband’s guild office with Mistress Haverhill.
    “Everyone speaks of the honor of being Chief Carpenter. It places no bread upon my table. Quite the reverse, it presents tiresome obligations. Iam weary of having to share my provision with the likes of that great lazy boy in there.”
    “Whatever will become of him?” Mistress Haverhill said, sighing.
    “I have advised Master Bukerel that he should be sold as an indigent. Even in bad times a young slave will fetch a price to repay the guild and all of us for whatever has been spent on the Cole family.”
    He was unable to breathe.
    Mistress Bukerel sniffed. “The Chief Carpenter will not hear of it,” she said sourly. “I trust I’ll convince him in the end. But by the time he comes around, we shall no longer be able to recover costs.”
    When the two women moved away, Rob lay behind the window curtain as though in fever, alternately sweating and chilled.
    All his life he had seen slaves, taking it for granted that their condition had little to do with him, for he had been born a free Englishman.
    He was too young by far to be a stevedore on the