UNLIKE EVERYONE ELSE, King Dick wasn’t shopping. He stood momentarily by the lower gates, surveying the square in front of him. Head high, club loosely resting in the crook of his neck, like a shouldered rifle, his eyes darting from stall to stall. Predator, thought Joe, the word flashing across his mind as the King spotted his prey. He moved with deadly purpose and precision, his eyes locked on his target. Where they saw him coming, the crowd moved aside. Where they didn’t, he used his club. Cobb and Lane disappeared.
Men were pushed into stalls in his wake. Betsy hastily scooped the remaining loaves to her chest. Joe and Martha threw what they could into a basket, seconds before three men fell on to her table, splitting the wood in two places.
Joe watched the King move, then looked at Habs. ‘This is what he does, isn’t it?’
‘This is what he does, and this is how he does it,’ agreed Habs. ‘It’s why he’s the King.’
‘Where did Cobb and Lane go?’
‘Who cares? C’mon. You gotta see this.’
Habs and Joe pushed their way towards the melee, reaching the beer tables just after King Dick. The crowd here were slower to respond and the King cut a swathe through the revellers, Habs and Joe stepping gingerly over the bruised and battered. The King forced his way to where three heavily bearded men stood laughing and toasting each other with large jugs of ale. One spotted his arrival and fled, the others were too slow and too late.
‘That’s Parker and Tupper from Six,’ said Habs speaking quickly in Joe’s ear. ‘And that was Wilson who ran away. Last night, they set upon two of our men from Four.’
‘So it’s nothing to do with the boxers?’
‘Nothin’ at all.’
‘An eye for an eye, then.’
‘Goddamn right. They’re villains and thugs. And they got away with it till King Dick came,’ said Habs.
The clouds had thinned, the light in the square now brighter than it had been all day; it gave each man present a sharply defined shadow. For a few moments, the King stood motionless, hands on hips, club swinging on its strap, his eyes fixed on the startled, trembling men in front of him. Parker was hunched and round-faced, his friend shorter and heavier. They both looked as though they were trying to speak, but no words came from their mouths. No one moved; no one made a sound. Habs and Joe held their breath, waiting for the show to begin. Habs counted the silence. He reached fifteen. Then, in a swift lunge, King Dick stooped down and grabbed the smaller of the two men by his ankles. As he rose up, the man fell, his head cracking against the granite. He howled and the King adjusted his grip; one hand now on the drinker’s leg, the other on the man’s belt. The King had a new club. He was called Tupper.
‘The men of Four are, by providence, my men!’ he bellowed at Parker, who still stood, despite his trembling. The King began to brandish his new club. The club started to howl.
Those who found themselves nearest his swinging arc stepped back a few paces.
‘So when you Christian white savages attack my men, you attack me. I am the men of Four!’ he cried, and swung the club.
The Rough Ally Parker was still holding his beer when his friend’s head crashed into his ribs. As he tottered backwards, the King swung again and two heads cracked. Like a rifle shot, the sound bounced around the walled square, and the King dropped one unconscious man on top of the other. Tupper on Parker, legs splayed, heads bloodied. The King surveyed the damage, straightened his hat, brushed down his coat and strode away.
Habs applauded solemnly, Joe was astonished. ‘I have never, in two years of war, seen anything like that,’ said Joe. ‘He turned that man into a battering ram.’
‘I heard that he done that before. Never seen it, though,’ said Habs, still clapping.
The King acknowledged him as he left. ‘Blood, blood, blood,’ he said and walked from the square. Joe watched him go, certain he was the only man in Dartmoor without a stoop.
Around them, excited conversations. The men from Four beamed, re-enacting some of the King’s moves; the Rough Allies, outraged all over again, hurried to their fallen. Joe and Habs pushed their way back up the square.
‘Do the Brits just let that happen?’ asked Joe. ‘Don’t they try to stop him?’
‘They like the King,’ answered Habs. ‘Like the way he do things. And they’ll be talkin’ ’bout that one for a while.’
Betsy and Martha were laying out their stall again, making what they could of their broken table.
‘And what was the blood he mentioned?’ said Joe. ‘I’ve seen a lot worse.’
‘Oh, that’s Othello. It’s always Othello.’ They stopped to pick up some displaced loaves, placing them on the now-sloping stall.
‘I’d’ve liked to see your play.’
‘You’ve heard a lot of it already, and by Sunday next, you’ll pretty much’ve heard it all.’
‘And where did you get to know such things? I never met anyone talk theatre talk like you.’
Habs threw Joe a glance. ‘What with me bein’ all Negro an’ everythin’?’ he said.
Joe considered his answer, studied Habs’s face. ‘Truth to tell, Habakkuk Snow, I hardly know you, so I don’t rightly know what to say to that. But I will say yes, you being Negro is some of it, but you knowing so much is the most of it. I’ve been at sea a while and I’ve never found anyone else who talks about plays like you do. Not one.’
‘Well, that’ll be books, Joe Hill,’ said Habs. ‘Jus’ books.’ He made a neat pile of five loaves while Joe worked on the small rolls. ‘My ma sent me to Quaker teachers, back in Philadelphia, when I was seven. Taught me everythin’ in two years. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. We had a little company right there in class. We did ol’ legends and Bible stories, but then our teacher tried us out with some Twelfth Night. Got me to read the part of Malvolio, and he said I was good. And he was right ’bout that. Looked like nothin’ on the page, but when it came out of my mouth it was different. Sounded … normal. Like the way it was meant to sound, almost. Does that make any sense?’
Betsy snatched a roll from Joe’s hands and sold it to a drunk from Three who devoured it whole. Joe barely noticed.
‘Well, what I heard up in your block yesterday?’ he said. ‘Sure sounded like you knew what you was doing, like it was natural. I give you that, Mr Snow.’ He looked down the square, then along the semicircle of prison blocks, and shook his head. ‘This is quite something. It really is. Here I am, in the biggest cesspit in the world, and I’m talking Shakespeare.’
‘And with a coloured man, too!’ said Habs.
‘And with a coloured man,’ agreed Joe. ‘Though, for the record, whatever King Dick says, William Shakespeare was as white as I am.’
‘Joe, no one is as white as you,’ said Habs.
‘Maybe. And going whiter by the day, no doubt.’ Joe licked some flour from his hands. ‘Did you stay with those teachers for long?’
Habs shook his head. ‘My pa died a couple years later and I took up sailcraft. Still loved the books, though, and they let me back when I wanted. Read all them plays in the end. We should try one, Joe.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Joe. ‘Romeo and Juliet?’
‘Why not?’ said Habs. ‘The pretty bakers of Tavistock here can assist in matters of deportment and kissin’.’
Martha was holding a wooden tray with three small loaves on it. She shot Habs a look. ‘We’ve sold nearly everything,’ she said. ‘Everyone seemed as hungry as you, Joe Hill.’
‘It’s the peace you’re profiting from,’ he replied. ‘We’ll be home soon enough, but there was much celebrating last night. Some have sore heads – your bread can work miracles.’
‘And did we win the war,’ asked Martha, ‘or did you Yankees win? I’m not sure I could say.’
‘Not sure I could say either,’ said Joe. ‘That’s about the measure of it. You should know better than us.’
‘The Flying Post doesn’t concern itself with such matters,’ she said, ‘but if you’re all going home, I’ll need some new customers.’ She sounded glum.
‘I’m hoping to persuade Mr Hill here that we could produce one more play before we go,’ said Habs. ‘Let’s at least read it through, Joe, there can be no harm in that.’
Joe shrugged. ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘I can see no harm in that either.’
‘And Ned and Sam’ll read their parts, too.’ Habs was getting busy. ‘All we need are the manuscripts.’
Joe waited for an explanation of where they would appear from, but none came. ‘You don’t have them?’
Habs shook his head.
‘So where are they?’
‘Where did you wake up, Mr Hill?’
‘Block Seven,’ Joe said, surprised, ‘but you know that.’
‘Where in Block Seven?’
‘In the cockloft.’
‘And what did you see there when you woke up?’
Joe thought awhile. ‘Apart from the crier’s face? I saw … of course! Books, I think. Rows and rows of books. Is that right?’
Habs nodded. ‘Old sailor in Seven by the name of Morris came into some prize money a while back and bought a library. Charges for it, but I know he has some Romeo and Juliets.’
‘That’s a library?’
A shrill voice cut through the market hubbub. ‘Noon bell! Noon bell! Afternoon watch!’
Tommy Jackson’s crier duties included timekeeping the daily market. Running into the square, woollen cap perched high on the back of his head, he tapped every stall with a stick before moving on to the next. ‘Noon bell! Noon bell! Afternoon watch!’
As soon as they had been tapped, each stall-holder began packing away their produce.
The militia barely seemed to notice fights or drunkenness, but the market was different; the Agent’s rules said it shut at noon. So it shut at noon.
‘I swear that boy is getting louder,’ said Betsy, and she thrust a bundled cloth at Habs. ‘We need to be away. A few crumbs and crusts for when your friend here needs a taste of Tavistock.’
‘He’s certainly had that,’ said Habs.
Tommy approached and smacked his hand on one of the trays. ‘You’ve been tapped, Miss Elizabeth,’ he said, grinning as he flew past.
‘Hey, Tommy!’ called Habs, and the boy glanced over his shoulder. ‘Cockloft in an hour.’
‘Yes, sir!’ he called back.
‘He’s a player, too?’ asked Joe.
‘Uh-huh,’ said Habs, as they watched the crier shutting down the market. ‘He plays a fine Paris. The play says he’s a young count and there’s none younger than him here.’
‘Only King Dick’s secretaries,’ suggested Joe.
The briefest pause. ‘Yes, Mr Hill, only the secretaries. Who are busy bein’ secretaries.’