He’d trimmed the paper to the right size, carefully tearing the sheets. He’d prepared his words, a rough draft written on fragments that he’d gathered in a pile and were now ready for a fair copy.
The rough table was uneven and he steadied it with a shim of wood under one leg. As he sat he tested it, nodding approvingly when it barely moved. He inspected the quill, pleased with its sharpness, then dipped it into the pot of ink. He breathed deeply before making the first mark on the paper.
Every man has a tale to tell, or so they always say. This is mine, the story of one who has been wronged by life. It is a tale that needs to be told, for people to hear, a tale I have kept in for far too long. Now, though, in this cruel winter, it is time for me to sit and write this. I have been maligned, but I have stood tall always, and now these are the days of my revenge.
I am not a Leeds man by birth. I came here later, seeking work and finding it. I was a clerk, I knew my letters and my sums, and I had a fair hand. I still do, as you can see. Leeds held opportunity for someone like me.
I was born in Dronfield. It is a place few people know, little more than a piece of dust on a map of the kingdom. The village itself is in Derbyshire, six miles from Chesterfield, a city famed only for its market and the crooked spire of its church, and not so far from Sheffield. Dronfield was a mean place during my childhood, the stone houses cold and damp, the inhabitants poor and low-spirited. My father was a labourer, my mother a laundress to the vicar and his family.
I suppose I should be grateful for that connection, as it helped me gain an education. I was intelligent, precocious and eager. If I had been otherwise no doubt I would still be there, passing a scythe over a field or wasted away to my death.
But the vicar saw my talents, and in his good, Christian way, wanted to encourage them. It was through him that I was able to go to the Fanshawe School, founded by no less a man than one of Good Queen Bess’s courtiers. A haughty man by all accounts, his name in all the beneficence in the area.
I was the ragged one in a class full of those from good homes, with their refined manners and good clothes. They disliked me for that, cruel as all children are. But once it was evident that I outshone them in the classroom, they shunned me. When they did deign to speak, they taunted me, pinched me, hurt me. My lot was to be cleverer than they, and they didn’t like that in such an urchin.
They were the first to make me feel inferior.
He sat back, looking at his work. The copperplate script was beautiful, a delight to the eye. But after so many years of clerking, it should have been. He put down the quill, flexing his fingers.
In Christ’s name, it was bitter here. Even with a fire, there was a chill deep in his soul, one that felt as if it would never leave. He’d spent too many years away from English winters, down in the heat and the sweat, and it had lightened his blood.
Still, the cold weather had brought something good. It had been easier to keep Graves’s corpse without the smell of rot filling the air. And then, when he was ready to let it be discovered, there were so few people on the streets that moving it to the riverbank had been a simple task.
Yes, there was luck involved, but also planning and preparation. He’d spent years readying himself for this, filling his days and dreams with the triumphs. Now it was becoming real, the first stage almost complete.
But it wouldn’t be finished until he’d celebrated it, written it all down, and sent it on to be read. His only regret was that he wouldn’t see the looks when he revealed his secret, and allowed them to understand what had mystified them.
Still, a man couldn’t have everything in this life. But he’d get much of what he wanted. Enough, certainly enough.