my father’s little house, with its shop on the ground floor, had become increasingly crowded with women as the years passed and my sisters were born. They meant no ill, I knew, but there were so infernally many of them and only one of me. I’d long since given up any hope that the next birth would bring a boy, and even if it did, by this time the child would be rather more a burden than a boon. I had to escape sometimes and the great cathedral had been my haven. I had spent my time therewith the choirboys, noting with smug tolerance the relationships between some of the other boys and their “gentlemen”. Though I had had offers, I had kept myself aloof, feeling that I was destined for greater things than these tawdry and winked at affairs. My friendships dwindled when I began to attend the King’s school as a paying student, easily outdistancing other boys who had been there longer, to their great resentment.
My special sanctuary I had discovered by a combination of accident and boredom during one interminable service at the cathedral. A space behind a pillar, lost in shadow, had proved not the shallow nook it seemed, but deep enough to hide some builder’s creaky and forgotten ladder, leading up into a small scaffold space above. There, in a quiet loft tucked under the roof and in among the vaulting, floored with a few planks and all but invisible from below, I would beguile the hours dreaming of futures that held no shadows of cobbler’s shops or unruly hordes of shrill females—futures that became less and less likely as time passed and I was not offered the scholarship that would lead to Oxford or Cambridge. I desperately wanted the university degrees that would allow me the title and rank of Gentleman, instead of the hated and lowly Yeoman, which even at the age of fourteen I felt to be beneath both my dignity and my worth. My feckless father and ambitious mother had stretched their resources to the limits just to send me to the King’s school; the university was out of the question without a scholarship.
One hot afternoon I had stretched out in my sanctuary to dream, fondly believing myself unwatched and unseen. I laid upon a rough sack that I had purloined to pad my hideaway, stuffed with straw smuggled up bit by bit in my jerkin. The heat under the leads was pleasant and I stripped down to shirt and hose, wadding my jerkin and venetians into a pillow for my head, dozing in the incense scented stillness. I awoke with a startled realization that I was not alone, that the pleasurable sensations in my loins were produced by the large hand busied there, that attached to the hand was a man, kneeling over me, his breath coming in harsh gasps.
“Pretty, pretty boy,” the hoarse voice droned, while I panicked and tried to struggle free from the huge hands that held me down. Soft hands, but strong and conquering hands that swept all resistance before them. Later, still facedown in my violated sanctuary, I had wept for my loss of innocence, a loss the more poignant because I knew the man would come for me again, that I would be awaiting him, and not entirely unwilling.
That same evening, with the last ounce of will and virtue left in me, I had gone to see an under-choirmaster, one of the few priests that I trusted, one that had not boys of his own, and told him about what had happened to me. I was not prepared for the rage that shook the florid face of the middle-aged divine, nor yet the form that the reaction would take.
Father Justin commanded me to lower my breeches and hose and whipped me with a birch rod until I bled, for lying, he said, about a respected citizen, an alderman, and a deacon of the church. As I fastened up my clothing I had noted the damp stain soiling the front of Father Justin’s own gown. I left the chamber with much to ponder.
Only a fortnight or so later, back under the leads of the cathedral roof, I had waited for the alderman. I only came here now to meet him and I missed my retreat, but if things went not awry. . . . Soon enough he was there, settling on the sacking and offering me a gilded trinket. I spurned it sullenly.