Revelation Read Free Page A

hands. 'Dinner is ready, my friends.'
    We all walked through to the dining room. The long old oaken dining table was set with plates of silver, and servants were laying out dishes of food under Elias' supervision. Pride of place went to four large chickens; as it was still Lent the law would normally have allowed only fish to be eaten at this time, but the freezing of the river that winter had made fish prohibitively expensive and the King had given permission for people to eat white meat.
    We took our places. I sat between Loder, with whom Roger had been arguing earlier, and James Ryprose, an elderly barrister with bristly whiskers framing a face as wrinkled as an old apple- john.
    Opposite us sat Dorothy and Roger and Mrs Loder, who was as plump and contented - looking as her husband. She smiled at me, showing a full set of white teeth, and then to my surprise reached into her mouth and pulled out both rows. I saw the teeth were fixed into two dentures of wood, cut to fit over the few grey stumps that were all that was left of her own teeth.
    'They look good, do they not'' she aske d, catching my stare. 'A barber- surgeon in Cheapside made them up for me. I cannot eat with them, of course.'
    'Put them away, Johanna,' her husband said. 'The company does not want to stare at those while we eat.' Johanna pouted, so far as an almost toothless woman can, and deposited the teeth in a little box which she put away in the folds of her dress. I repressed a shudder. I found the French fashion some in the upper classes had adopted for wearing mouthfuls of teeth taken from dead people, rather gruesome.
    Roger began talking about his hospital again, addressing his arguments this time to old Ryprose. 'Think of the sick and helpless people we could take from the streets, maybe cure.'
    'Ay, that would be a worthwhile thing,' the old man agreed. 'But what of all the fit sturdy beggars that infest the streets, pestering one for money, sometimes with threats? What is to be done with them; I am an old man and sometimes fear to walk out alone.'
    'Very true.' Brother Loder leaned across me to voice his agreement. 'Those two that robbed and killed poor Brother Goodcole by the gates last November were masterless servants from the monasteries. And they would not have been caught had they not gone bragging of what they had done in the taverns where they spent poor Goodcol e's money, and had an honest inn keeper not raised the constable.'
    'Ay, ay.' Ryprose nodded vigorously. 'No wonder masterless men beg and rob with impunity, when all the city has to ensure our safety are a few constables, most nearly as old as me.'
    'The city council should appoint some strong men to whip them out of the city,' Loder said.
    'But, Ambrose,' his wife said quietly. 'Why be so harsh; When you were younger you used to argue the workless poor had a right to be given employment, the city should pay them to do useful things like pave the streets. You were always quoting Erasmus and Juan Vives on the duties of a Christian Commonwealth towards the unfortunate.' She smiled at him sweetly, gaining revenge perhaps for his curt remark about her teeth.
    'So you were, Ambrose,' Roger said. 'I remember it well.'
    'And I,' Dorothy agreed. 'You used to wax most fiercely about the duties of the King towards the poor.'
    'Well, there's no interest from that quarter, so I don't see what we're supposed to do.' Loder frowned at his wife. 'Take ten thousand scabby beggars into the Inn and feed them at High Table?'
    'No,' Roger answered gently. 'Merely use our status as wealthy men to help a few. Till better times come, perhaps.'
    'It's not just the beggars that make walking the streets a misery,' old Ryprose added gloomily. ' There's all these ranting Bible- men springing up everywhere. There's one at the bottom of Newgate Street, stands there all day, barking and railing that the Apocalypse is coming.'
    There were murmurs of agreement up and down the table. In the years since Thomas