Revenger by Rory Clements

Author:Rory Clements
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780553907858
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-06-20T23:00:00+00:00

“LET ME TELL YOU my story, if you have the stomach for it. I am of the notorious Kett family from Norwich in Norfolk. Have you heard of us, Mr. Shakespeare?”

“Indeed.”

“It is a name tainted with treason, but I wear it with pride. Robert Kett was my grandfather and a landowner of wealth. Our family lived well, with landholdings around Norwich and Wymondham. My grandfather’s rebellion, though he would not have called it such, ended all that. When he was hanged in chains from the battlements of Blanche Fleur, all his lands were attainted and given by King Edward to Lord Audley, his captor. My father and his brothers, who had thought they would inherit lands, were brought to impoverishment.”

Shakespeare refilled their goblets.

“By the time I was born in the first year of Her Majesty’s reign, we lived in a small cottage not far from Wymondham. My father worked for Audley’s estate as a common farmhand, a serf, and my mother took in weaver’s work. It was a modest enough life, but we had enough to eat and my parents ensured we were all educated in reading and some writing. They taught us, too, that we were better than the place to which we had been brought by fate. There were three of us, all girls, and I was the eldest. The others in the village thought we were above ourselves; they did not like to see maidens with books and mocked us for it. At the age of eight, we had to work on the farm, milking, churning, reaping, feeding the stock, and collecting the eggs. Then, when I was twelve, we were brought yet lower.” She stopped for a moment, unable to find a voice to speak. “Forgive me, Mr. Shakespeare.”

“Drink a little wine.”

“The sickness came. The sweat. It pains me grievously to recall it, even now. It took Mother and Father and my youngest sister, all in the space of a fortnight. That left just Matilda and me. We had no help from our neighbors. Even the almoner called me a dirty maunderer, spat in my face, and said he would not give me so much as a farthing.”

“So what did you do?”

“We took the road to London, as I thought. But it was no such thing. We joined a band of vagabonds for protection and became runagates ourselves. That is no life. You can have no idea of the cold, Mr. Shakespeare. In midwinter the frost bites so deep that the elders and babes amongst us froze where they slept.” She held a hand to her bare throat, as if overcome by the recollection. “There were men there, and women, too, that would kill for half a loaf. I saw them fight until the blood ran freely into the mud over the ownership of a dead hare. We scavenged for anything and everything. Nettles, insects, all the fruits of the forest and hedgerow, cats and dogs and rats, too. Whatever we could find. I don’t doubt there were some that gnawed on human flesh.

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