Chapter Text
Over the decades and centuries of what would become his semi-immortality, Hob Gadling often credits the true living of his life to that chilly day in September of 1389 in the then White Horse tavern.
Hob’s life began mundane, born in the usual way, church christened Robert, and working in fields as a child. Before the age of ten, he watched more than half of the children in his village die, children he cannot recall a single face of now, while vile, pulsating sores he still recalls vividly. With so much death and less men to work, Hob had options, unlike his father tied to the land, and chose the ease of fighting over fields. He followed the Earl of Buckingham to France where he learned Brittany mud cakes on much the same as English mud and the people you point your arrows at look nearly the same as the men beside you in the ditch. He also learned that the best life could really offer was another sunrise and another evening with good drink and good friends in any tavern offered.
But this blip of time was before; before a black haired man with skin as pale as the highest lord who never worked a day outside his castle stood beside Hob’s table, a picture of royalty out of place and made of pure imagination, and said, “Did I hear you say you have no intention of ever dying?”
After came once Hob said, amused and cocky and maybe even half way to believing, “A hundred years’ time, on this day? I will see you in the year of our lord 1489 then.”
Hob thinks very little about the brief conversation and odd wager of sorts regarding his supposed plan to avoid death for the next ten years. Men will boast and crow about all manner of grand schemes or passing philosophies when drinking with a merry party, Hob no less and maybe more than most. Why should he dwell on a nosy noble’s joke with peasants?
“What do you think of this?” Will says to their quartet around the camp fire. He holds up a small red gem. “From the gentleman’s purse. A ruby?”
“What does it matter as long as it fetches coin?” Ed replies, not looking up from his watery stew.
Hob clicks his teeth and pulls out the emerald ring from his pocket. “Would fetch less than mine, I’d wager.” He grins wide as Will starts to sputter. “Maybe buy myself a plot of land with this.”
“What would you do with land?” Ed retorts looking up this time. “Rob your own serfs?”
Hob scoffs. “I didn’t say anything about farming the land.” Hob waves a hand through the air. “I’ll build a castle on it, maybe find a spot with a hill for the advantage.” He cocks his head. “Put my bedroom on the second floor facing the sun in the morning so I always wake up warm.”
Stephen scoffs. “Right fair that is! I want a castle. Should be splitting the take as we all did the banditing!”
“I think you’re over valuing that bauble,” Ed says, shoving a huge spoonful of stew into his mouth.
“And what on mine,” Will says, holding it closer to the fire light. “Might be rubies fetch more than Emeralds, eh?”
Ed cocks his head leaning closer. “You remember that time in London, some tavern by the Thames…” He blows out a breath. “Years back now, soon after fighting in France? We saw a strange noble who had a ruby ten times the size of that. Same cut though, yeah?”
“Are you a jeweler now?” Stephen grunts.
Hob breathes out slowly, twisting the ring between his fingers, memory stirring. “Yes… The man all in black…”
“Should have took it off him,” Ed continues. “That would’ve been something to build a castle off of.”
“Who was this?” Will asks, pocketing his gem again.
“You weren’t there,” Ed explains and points his spoon at Hob. “Told Hob he was going to live forever.”
Stephen snorts. “Only cause Hob couldn’t shut his mouth, acting like a friar on Sunday preaching on abouts not dying.”
Will raises both eyebrows, taking a swig from his mug. “And you didn’t lift his jewels?”
Stephen laughs out loud and Ed snorts, spilling some of his stew. “Maybe Hobsie will still have the chance, yeah?” Ed flicks stew off his hand. “Seeing him in ninety years, right?”
Hob grins wide, the memory fading back into jest. “Right I am! At least make him pay for the drinks when I do on accounting it was his idea.”
The other three men laugh harder, comments about ordering the most expensive mead pairing with whether Hob will even remember the date what with banditry taking him all around England, ending in another round of comparisons of coin and gems from their most recent robbery. Hob drinks his wine, grins and thinks about the muddy road ahead tomorrow, hopes for a cart to cross their path and a willing woman at the next village.
When he sleeps around the fire, he dreams about sunrises over green fields, faceless children long since lost running alongside him as they laugh while someone in the distance, a presence felt instead of seen, watches.
Come the turn of the century, the new King Henry, having deposed Richard, finds himself immediately with a revolt in Wales. As soldiering generally comes easier to Hob than banditry, someone else choosing the routes and usually providing the food, he joins the army that seems the most English regardless of which King it ends up being headed by at the time. Hob follows the army around England and into Wales, has the best sex of his life to that date with a Welsh girl at Wigmore Castle, stands six feet away from King Henry, manages to save a little of the meager pay granted to a soldier, gets shot twice by arrows – once in the arm and once in the leg and recovers faster than he expects both times – and sees the sun rise each day until 1415.
An arrow pierces Stephen through the neck early at Mynydd Hyddgen. Will dies of rot from an ankle wound somewhere on the march. Hob and Ed last the war together and make their way toward London once more.
One day along their route Ed says, “Think I’m a might too old for battle any longer. Probably only got five years left to me. Sometimes wish I had stayed with farming like my brother did back near Chester.”
Hob turns to him as they walk, ready to make a quip about the twilight years of their fifties now and how they’d already both beaten his father, dead at forty-two. The humor fizzles out before his lips as he looks at Ed, really looks at him without orders shouted around them or screams of injured men or the panic of dodging arrow fire, less mud and grime than most days. Wrinkles form a wave across his sun-browned forehead, classic crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and his cheeks sagging from years of use in laughter or fear. Edward looks old, Ed is old, aged fifty-four if Hob recalls, and his visage shows such perfectly.
Hob does not need a shard of glass now to know his face looks differently. He’s heard it the past five years at least as a joke amongst the other soldiers; how any women they cross would choose Hob first, he being so youthful still or how they should think him a new recruit, fresh faced off the farm if they did not know better. Hob always laughed along with them, never thinking on the truth of it. Yet now he thinks on it, on time passing, on what age brings, and knows he looks much the same as he did before this round of war, even before that, as if he were still thirty-some years old – merely troubled by back pain and not stiffened joints or absent teeth or a balding head.
“You must tell me your secret sometime,” Ed says into the silence of Hob’s thoughts. “Guessing the war didn’t wear on you as hard as me.”
Hob forces out a chuckle. “Well, I was shot twice.”
Ed chuckles back. “Aye, a time more than me. You saying I should try for another arrow to lose some of these lines?” He gestures at his face, still laughing. “Think I’ll pass on that option.”
“Right,” Hob replies, keeping levity to his tone. “A lot to sacrifice for a handsome face.”
Ed shakes his head as he watches the dirt road before them. “Oh, so we think you handsome now?” He laughs once again then looks up at Hob. His expression changes as they look at each other.
Ed stares a beat longer then his lips part, his voice quiet. “Sometimes… I wonder how…” He laughs but it sounds more breathless, like a gasp. “I think if someone passed us now they would think you my son.”
Edward dies, four years later instead of five, of a feverish pestilence, Hob still stuck with him through their wandering without a war to direct them.
“Is it true then?” Ed whispers to Hob seated on a rickety chair beside Ed’s bed. “You’re not going to die?”
“I did say that once,” Hob replies, trying to be funny but his voice coming out flat instead.
“That day, when you spoke to that noble, his gem, all black… like a ghost now, I think, or… or…”
Hob grips Ed’s shoulder. “Ed, maybe try to rest instead, eh?”
“No, that man! He was like… something else… You remember.” Hob nods jerkily and Ed grips Hob’s hand. “What he said to you, was it true? Who was he?”
“I don’t… how can I…”
“What if… Was it the devil that day?” Ed whispers.
The night Ed dies, Hob dreams of a dimly lit tavern. Laughter floats around him, conversation indistinct, he hears his own voice saying ‘I’ve made up my mind, I’m not going to die.’
He tastes smoke on his tongue – fire smoke, cannon smoke – the laughter turns to cries, to moans of pain on a battle field though the tavern remains.
Hob turns his head away from the sound of arrows flying, words shouted in French, in Welsh, friends saying to him, ‘so young still, our Hob.’
He watches the swirl of candle light and mugs, forms indistinct in the tavern around him until a crisp voice says, ‘In this tavern of the White Horse, in one hundred years.’
Hob kneels in the second to last pew at the far left corner of the church of Saint Giles, just outside Cripple-Gate. It being midday, he kneels alone in the church, most men at work and the priest nowhere to be seen. Hob fists his hands tight together as he stares at the tall stained glass windows down past the nave behind the chancel, watching over the whole of the church. Sunlight filters through the images of Jesus and saints into a colorful, indistinct square upon the stone floor. The light comforts him as though it were the embrace of God, as if God spoke and said ‘you are safe here.’ Hob isn’t sure that’s true.
“Lord,” Hob whispers down into the pew. “I know I attend church less than some men but I’ve heard a mass, taken communion, I am not the basest of sinners.” Hob huffs. “I don’t claim to be a saint either. I am just a man, one of your flock.”
Hob looks up again at the stained glass. “Not Saint Giles… patron of lepers, invalids and beggars. I may not be ill, Lord, but I beg you now, tell me.” Hob sucks in a sharp breath. “What have I done?”
His eyes tick higher past the carved stone arches, toward the wood beamed ceiling. “Why do I still live? I do not ask for death, I am grateful for this life. But if I bargained for more… if that is what I did, I did not intend it.” Hob huffs and looks down once more. “I did not. Talking a right lot of shite in a tavern doesn’t make a bargain with…”
Hob cuts himself off before he can blaspheme more, crosses himself then presses his hands palm together again. “Tell me who that man was. Tell me what deal did I make? What have I lost to gain this life?” He looks down the nave toward the cloth covered alter, a cross upon it. “Was he the devil? Is my soul forfeit once you choose to take me, God?”
Hob waits in silence, hands still up in prayer. He hears no booming voice from the rafters, no angel whispering in his ear. Hob expected as much. He is no priest or friar, no monk in a monastery writing scripture heard in dreams. Hob is but a man. A man who, it is beginning to seem like, cannot die.
Hob’s lips quick up. “Perhaps this is truly a gift. Maybe I met a saint?”
Why a saint would to choose to bless Hob with another hundred years of life, he cannot say. The option seems unlikely.
“Stranger,” Hob says aloud. “Can you hear me if I pray?” He looks slowly around the empty church. “Or is this not your house?”
Hob blows out a breath, feeling half mad. “Tell me Stranger, what do you want of me? Is there a quest of some kind yet before me, am I like King Arthur with a sword in stone? Must I reignite the Crusades? Steal the heart of a fairy queen? Why give me this?” Hob finally drops his prayer hands and waves an arm in the arm. “Why spare me from death because of a boast? I didn’t ask for it, not truly.”
Hob leans back against the pew, slipping his legs around so he sits cross legged now, scrunched between the hard wood. “I’m not saying no, not exactly. I am glad to be free of death but… but why, Stranger?” Hob tips his head back and stares at the ceiling toward the silent heavens beyond. “Who are you?”
Hob puts his feet to the ground and travels the old Roman roads of England. No new war sparks yet in England, so Hob returns to a life of banditry once more. Hob teams up with various people along the way; Peter who is barely fifteen, Patrick down from Scotland with always a crack about the follies of the English, and Oliver obsessed with pearls.
In Ely, they earn some honest money by helping to build a new chimney on a tavern.
“Time was you only saw these proper in castles,” the older man leading the build explains to Hob. “Rich lord’s luxury.”
Hob adds several more stones to the cart as the man drones on. “You seem to be doing well enough.”
The man guffaws and slaps Hob on the back. “Well enough indeed to expand me whole building and add this here.” He thumbs at the half built chimney.
“I still say it’s not right,” Peter says as he rolls an empty cart over to Hob and grasps the full one. “Me mum always said the smoke was good for yer health, just like the heat.”
“Oh right?” Hob retorts. “Stinging your eyes all the time, smelling up your clothes?”
Peter frowns. “Cause your clothes smell so grand.”
“I always thought smoke smelled good,” Oliver chimes in, nearly falling in the mud under the weight of two stones.
“Weakness of the English,” Patrick gripes from where he adds mortar to the growing wall of the chimney. “Have to huddle round your fires, rid yourself of the smoke.” Patrick scoffs. “Come to Scotland and learn what a chill is, you’ll be pleased as all to have but an open fire.”
“Yeah, and why aren’t you still in Scotland, eh?” Peter shoots back.
Hob and Oliver laugh, Oliver saying something more about money enough for Patrick in England to make it worth his while. Hob keeps his eyes on the chimney wall abutted with the Tavern, taller than he’d thought common buildings would grow. Will one day they all live in their own castles like rich lords? He thinks he will have to stick around Ely long enough to enjoy the fruits of this labor and drink with clear eyes beside a fire with a brand new chimney.
Hob dreams of sunrises, light spilling over green hills and breathing in the warmth like a physical thing, filling his lungs and making him glow with each new day.
A year sees Hob traveling with twins – a thing he didn’t know possible – Charles and Godfrey, both blond as angels and likely to have been killed by bandits themselves if not for Hob finding them. Oddly enough, the novelty of identical twins to many folk in the towns they pass through sometimes brings them lodging, money – without any need for theft or subterfuge – and, this time around, a chance for Hob to learn chess.
In a castle’s grand hall, half a dozen people sit eating with the Lord and Lady of the house, a Lord Barker, if Hob recalls. The other people fall along the same lines as Charles and Godfrey, minor novelties in being themselves, including a traveling minstrel and his acrobatic wife – both jumping up from their seats to perform every so often, a Spanish moor wearing a dazzling red coat, and beside him a dwarf looking as normal as one of such stature can. Hob smiles secretively at the unintended novelty in himself that his hosts do not know.
“I can’t say I’ve ever slept in a castle before,” Hob says conversationally to the Moor to his left – Hob caught Ibn as his first name. “At least not one that wasn’t being used for battle.”
“And what battles have you been in, Hob?” Charles interrupts across from Hob.
“Aye, can’t imagine you in a war,” Godfrey continues.
Charles makes an affirming noise. “More likely to steal loot left behind from an army.”
“Or the ladies.”
“I may just steal out before dawn tomorrow and leave you two on your own,” Hob threatens.
Charles and Godfrey only laugh together, the sound like bells. Hob opens his mouth to chastise the twins again but Lady Barker stops him with a hand upon his arm.
“Come now, let them have their fun.” Hob smiles and gives her a deferential nod. She pulls her hand back and gestures to a smaller table set up to the side of the room. “And we might have our own fun.”
Hob wonders at the dangers of flirting with a married, noble lady and decides it would also be in poor taste to deny the lady of the castle. “As you wish, m’lady.”
She leads him to the table, the two of them sitting across from each other and what looks like a game of some sort between them.
“Do you know chess, Master Gadling?”
“Not yet, m’lady.”
She smiles, her skin pale and her eyes a dark brown to nearly be lost in her wide pupils. “Then you shall have to learn.”
She moves the black and white pieces around on the board until all of each color stand in rows on either side, the black in front of Hob. “We have the king, queen, rooks, bishops, knights and pawns. Each moves in their own way.” She takes one pieces at a time, showing their straight or diagonal moves.
When she moves the knight, Hob scoffs aloud. “I think you jest with me, Lady.”
She smiles with amusement. “I am showing you the rules.”
“And this one moves like a corner? What sense does that make?”
“A knight must be able to move and act in unusual ways if he is to protect his king and queen.” She places the knight back on its original square. “And I did not devise the rules myself.”
“As far as I know,” Hob retorts, daring at some familiarity. “You could make them up as you go and I would be none the wiser having never seen the game.”
Her lips purse with charmed amusement. “I swear myself to be an honest, Christian woman. I teach you true.”
Hob nods. “I acquiesce to you.”
“The goal of the game is to take your opponent’s king.” She sits up straighter, folding her hands against her blue dress. “Shall we play?” She immediately moves one of her pawns forward two spaces.
“Ah!” Hob cries. “You said pawns moved one space.”
“Yes.” She holds up a finger. “Except for the first move. It is a new rule.”
Hob smirks. “New when, since you taught a few seconds ago?”
“Do you call me liar once more?”
Hob makes an expression of mock horror. “Of course not, m’lady.”
“Then play,” she proclaims.
They move their pieces back and forth, Lady Barker reminding him of the rules when needed. Unfortunately, for Hob, the game ends with his king forfeit in less than ten minutes.
“Ah me,” Lady Barker sighs. “Perhaps it is not your game, Master Gadling.”
Hob grins back at her as he resets the pieces. “Perhaps not yet, but I have all the time in the world to get better.”
Hob dreams of moon filled starry nights, the full moon’s glow illuminating new buildings in each town he visits, the North Star guiding him true no matter which way he turns on endless dry roads, twinkling and sparkling and promising new delight and wonder.
Hob meets Matthew carrying a small Bible in his pocket which he lets Hob page through over and over to see the small bits of colorful illumination and which Matthew will never explain how he came to have. Then Benjamin who turns out to be Bethany having convinced Hob for at least three months of her maleness and who sticks around for another six months without Hob giving her away.
Near port over in Lynn, after a very successful several months of banditry that earned him new shoes with coin to spare, Hob tries a new spirit known as brandy.
“Now now,” the Innkeeper says as he places the bottle down on the bar top. “It does cost a bit more but I tell you, it is worth the extra. Sweet and stronger than your average beer or ale.”
“Or perhaps you wish to rid yourself of an ill bought stock,” Matthew grumbles.
Benjamin punches Matthew in the arm. He hisses in annoyance but does not hit back. “You said it’s sweet?” Benjamin asks, crossing his arms.
The innkeeper nods. “Like the freshest fruit you’ve ever tasted.”
“Oranges are sour,” Matthew retorts.
“He said sweet,” Benjamin argues. “Haven’t you had an apple?”
“I’m from the south.”
Benjamin rolls his eyes. “Churl.”
Matthew’s eyebrows fly up and he frowns.
“Give us all a round,” Hob says, placing a shilling down on the counter.
“Hob!” Matthew and Benjamin cry together.
Hob grins at both of them as the innkeeper swiftly scoops up the shilling and opens the bottle. “Can’t have a chance like this lost, can we? Didn’t your mother tell you to try new things?”
Matthew frowns. “No.”
“You’ve not met my mother,” Benjamin grimaces.
“Listen to me then, older and wiser than you lot.” They both snort. “Things are always changing and you’ve got to change with them.”
Benjamin raises his eyebrows. “Try brandy?”
Hob picks up the three poured glasses. “Exactly.”
Benjamin shrugs and take his glass. “If you’re paying, who am I to argue.”
Matthew sighs but takes his glass as well.
“Cheers,” Hob says, the three of them clinking glasses.
Hob sips the amber liquid, indeed tasting sugar and fruit and something like burning. He sips more and watches the firelight glint off the liquid. It tastes divine and swims straight up to his head. Hob thinks two glasses could probably get him drunk and maybe convince Benjamin to act a bit more like Bethany for the night if he’s lucky. He takes another sip and sighs happily. Some twenty years lie behind him when, by all rights, he should have died and instead he tries brandy for the first time.
“And how’d you like it?”
Hob glances back at the innkeeper. “It’s brilliant.”
Hob wakes up at the turn of September in 1449 and realizes fifty years have passed since he boasted in a tavern about not ever dying and a black clad man with a deep voice and the calmness of angels appears to have taken him up on it. Hob starts to count the months and years differently from then on as the time ticks closer to a meeting back at the White Horse tavern.
Hob sits on a pew in a church so small it bears no name, no church of Saint Augustine or church of Our Lady of Priory or the Westminster Abbey of Kings. The entirety of the church makes up one room, a door leading to the nave and a small door off the side for no one else but the priest to enter through. A gold cross sitting on the wooden alter and a crude stained glass window of Jesus on the Cross compose the decoration of the church. Hob guesses local church taxes took years to gain those embellishments to the glory of the Lord.
Once again he sits alone, Hob and God, no priest or Latin verse or indecipherable Bible page in between. But then again, perhaps one other person – or angel or demon or wizard or mystic – lies somewhere just as far and near.
“I asked you once, years back now, about what I had done,” Hob says to the holy house around him. “You didn’t answer me.”
He does not palm his hands or kneel now, so maybe this will not count as prayer. Maybe Hob only talks to himself. Maybe he tries to reach out to his Stranger once more.
“I ask you again if my life now, of the long life I bargained for – not even bargained really, simply said. I ask you, is this wrong? I may not be a monk or a pious farmer, I steal, done so quite a bit for sure, but I…” Hob chuckles to himself. “I can’t even say I haven’t killed, but what else does a man do in war? I would be far from the first and does anyone count war as murder?”
Hob sighs, feeling himself beginning to ramble. “I’m not asking if I’m worthy of this or even if I’m good, I guess. I’m asking how? I’m asking what this is? Is anyone else like this? Am I… did I make a wrong choice?”
Hob lifts his hands and rests them on the pew in front of his, the wood rough, good for keeping parishioners awake during long sermons, no doubt.
“What do I put my faith in? In the word of God, that a man should die and receive his reward because if I don’t die…” Hob makes a questioning face to the empty space. “But is that just it? Is life my reward? Should I put my faith in that? Not you and your church, Popes supposedly ordained by God and yet we had a time with two of them fighting like children? Should I put my faith in…” He thinks of the faintest of smiles on a pale face. “Do I put my faith in what he gave me?”
Hob sits ups straighter and pulls his hands back. He feels himself smiling. “I just can’t believe whatever I did, bargained with the devil or blessed by an angel, I can’t believe it’s wrong.” He sighs softly. “Not when life is so bright.”
In 1455 war returns to jolly old England, this time a civil war. Hob is honestly surprised it took so long.
Richard of York decided to fight for his claim to the throne against weak Henry VI but needed troops to do so. After so many years of wandering, Hob thinks it time for some of the structure and familiarity of military life. Hob receives his first chainmail, plate armor and helmet. Being one among many troops and no rank to give him command, he does not gain a full suit of armor. Looking at the difficulty those men have in simply walking around and the noise they make, doesn’t make Hob envy them much. Hob also receives a sword, a blessing and a curse; archers deal their kills from far away but a sword helps when the enemy gains ground too close.
Hob fights at St. Albans, the smell of blood, shouting and screams now paired with the more prevalent clang of metal. A horse crushes a teenage farmer beside him and Hob stabs the rider through the gap in his armor under his arm.
Spotting the Lancastrian banners at Blore Heath, Hob warns of the ambush and they win the fight despite being out numbered.
Hob’s eyes draw toward the distant walls of Delapré Abbey during the battle at Northampton and thinks it a strange thing that violence and death should lie so close to a house of God. But perhaps the Lord turns away from the wars of men and the prayers of soldiers. Hob sees enough soldiers die, verse on their lips, to believe life still offers more than death where God may not wait at all.
A mace to the head during a skirmish at Worksop sends Hob’s helmet flying. He sees the mace coming toward him a second time then wakes up in the night, dead bodies bloodied and alone around him. He takes this as a sign to change sides in the conflict or be faced with questions and suspicion upon his return.
His first fight with the Lancastrians at Wakefield ends in defeat. A man who looks an age Hob no longer has – Christopher who told him about doves nesting every year in his family barn – leans heavy on Hob’s arm as they retreat, blood coating his hips. Hob wonders if he made a mistake switching sides.
The locations and leaders become fuzzy after that. Hob finds it difficult to swear allegiance to a king or would-be-king when he knows little of their claims and lineage and never speaks to such royalty himself. Hob’s goals merely lie in seeing another day, another drink, another smile, another story, another sunrise with the world around him and the wonder he might find even on a battlefield.
In the lulls between battles, sometimes years long, he wiles away hours with his fellow soldiers, fed well enough but bored without someone to fight.
“Just set it on its side,” Hob says to Bertram as he tilts over an empty wine barrel at Hob’s direction. “Yes, like that. Now give me your lance head, Thomas.”
Thomas sorts and leans back against earthen trench. “Why should I, Robert?”
Hob shoots him a look. “I know it’s broken, what else will you do with it?”
“Stab you.”
Mark, Bertram and Steven all laugh uproariously. Hob holds out his hand still, giving a smirk and a wiggle of his eyebrow. Thomas sighs, reaching down at his side and hands Hob the lance head, the broken wood of the pike still attached. Hob places the lance on the ground, holds it down with his foot and breaks off the wood.
“Eh!”
The others watch Hob as he pulls off the last bits of wood so only the sharpened metal remains.
“Right.” Hob holds up the lance head by the blunt end, stands and walks a meter or so backward. “I wager I can throw this and hit right in the center of that barrel base from here.”
Thomas snorts with disbelief, Mark shaking his head.
“Wager what?” Bertram asks.
Hob grins. “That you can’t.”
Mark and Thomas laugh again while Steven mutters, “Only cause he’s got no coin.”
“Watch then.” Hob hefts the lance head back and flings it toward the wine barrel. The metal impales in the wood far to the left. “Fuck.”
All four men around him start to laugh and clap.
Hob sighs and crosses his arms. “Well then, anyone man enough to think they can do better?”
Steven stands up immediately, pulls the spear out of wood and walks over to where Hob stands. “Of course I can, shove over.”
They play for four hours, Hob finally hitting the center after the second hour and bets of real money making their way in around the third hour.
(Some two hundred, maybe three hundred years later Hob finds someone hung the wine base upon a wall, added colors, rules, and more fine pointed ‘spears’ to throw then called the game ‘Darts.’ Hob maintains he invented the game from then on, even if he has no one to tell.)
Battles resume in the form of rebellions as kings seem to cycle through the throne like the opening and closing of a door, alliances between York and Lancaster, Edward or Warwick or Margaret, all claiming a piece and demanding the whole, pulling parts of England to their side back and forth.
Hob focuses more on the men around him, the real people he will meet and fight beside, not the royal names the banners supposedly represent which he will never meet.
“Right, so the object of the game is to win as many tricks as possible,” Alan says as he deals the cards between them.
“And what’s a trick then?” Hob asks reaching for his cards.
“Oy, wait till I deal them all out.” Alan smacks Hob’s hand.
Hob huffs but smiles still and waits for Alan to finish, dark hair falling in Alan’s face and something about his eyes that remind Hob of more than seventy years past.
“A trick is matching cards.”
“What’s to match?” Hob says finally picking up his cards. “The numbers?”
“Sometimes,” Alan says. “But also the suits, whatever the lead suit is would win first, same with higher numbers.”
Hob looks at the cards in his hands, linked symbols shaped like hearts and clovers and diamonds, some red and some black. One card in his hand bears a crude image of what he assumes to be a queen, two dots of red blush on her cheeks, the curve of a bosom and black crown upon her head.
“And what of the picture cards?” Hob asks.
“King, Queen, knave and ace. They’re highest.”
“Ace?”
“The card with only one suit on it.”
Hob frowns. “Why would the card with the least numbers count higher?”
“It’s not least numbers, it’s an ace.”
“You said it was one.”
Alan huffs and bops Hob on the nose with the back of his cards. “Hobsie, what else do you want me to say? I didn’t make the cards.”
Hob smiles at the nickname he hasn’t allowed anyone in years and tries to swipe at Alan’s cards. “Oh really, thought such bad art would have had to come from you.”
Alan groans and pulls his cards out of Hob’s reach. “You want to learn or not? Can’t believe you haven’t played with cards before as it is. Would think you’re old as my da, you acting like this.”
Hob smirks again, fanning out his cards between his hands. “Maybe I am. Just get on with the rules then.”
Hob holds Alan’s hand tight when Alan dies at Bosworth Field, two arrows in his belly. Alan whispers to Hob of a cherry haired girl, of babies he will never father, of a small ship he planned to sail, of the beauty of Hob’s brown eyes, anchoring him to the earth, of a spring time festival with the reddest apples, of meeting God for his reward and please no worse fate. Hob thinks kings play with the fate of men, never considering the cost of those so far below. Hob wonders if his Stranger is like a king, puppeteering Hob for some purpose Hob cannot understand but must bear the cost of alone.
After what seemed like endless claims to the throne and supposed victors, Henry VII wears the crown and Hob takes off his armor hopefully for good. Thirty years of fighting should last Hob well enough for another century or two if his life remains everlasting as it does now.
Hob shaves off his beard, might as well lean into the vision of youth, and heads back toward London. Only a couple years remain until his meeting at the White Horse and he plans to arrive right on time.
With the war over and his desire to remain close to London making banditry out of the question, Hob looks into a stable, London based trade instead. Hob tries a blacksmith, an armory, a mason, even a dyers but with no guild membership and no early apprenticeship to recommend him, Hob finds himself turned away without a foot in the door.
Walking the streets near Westminster Abbey, Hob stops in front of one shop with papers tacked to the wall beside the entrance. He sees a few images of men on horseback, the shape of bishops or priests, inked in black. What draws his eye more, however, are the pages of text. Hob cannot read what they say but he knows well enough what writing by hand looks like. These pages are not that.
“Printing press,” Hob whispers to himself, hefting his small bag higher up on his shoulder.
He saw one of these new printed books once during the war when whichever side he fought for at the time took hold of a castle. Most of the displayed papers have large text centered on the page, likely titles. However, a couple show large blocks of text instead, obviously an interior. The words on the page line up perfectly on each side, as sharp edged as a sword.
“All this for the few priests and lords that can read?” Hob purses his lips to himself. “But must pay out well for those that buy…”
“Oy!”
Hob jerks back from the display board and whips his head around to the cry from the open print shop doors. A man of medium height and tawny brown skin with a wool cap hiding most of his hair stands in the doorway.
The two of them stare at each other for two breaths then both speak at once. “Are you hiring workers at – are you looking for work?”
They smile at once. The man steps back from the door, holding it open for Hob. Hob takes two steps then sighs, rubbing a hand over the back of his hair. “Probably should tell you first I’m not guild.”
“And I should tell you there is no printing guild.”
Hob grins. “That is the kind of guild I like.”
The man stops again just as Hob reaches the door. He looks Hob up and down once. Hob frowns and raises both eyebrows. “You look strong… soldier?”
“Yes.”
“Bowman?”
“Not this time around.” The man frowns and Hob speaks quickly. “Mostly sword, lance some too. But strong enough, I assure you.”
The man shrugs. “We’ll see. If not, can kick you out again.” Hob frowns his time. “But one of my workers went and got himself killed at the tavern last night and now I have a man without a partner.”
“Partner?”
The man already turns around into the shop, shouting over the noise Hob now notices, so Hob follows. They hurry past a large open room Hob only manages to glance at – at least three square shaped machines with pairs of men working at each.
“Master Caxton? Cax – Billy? Billy!”
“Hazm?”
“Found a man to replace Charlie.”
As they walk around a corner, a man with a graying beard, green hat upon his head and a stack of papers in his arms stands before them. Realization abruptly strikes Hob with some combination of humor and shock that while the owner of this print house appears thirty years Hobs senior the truth lies much more the other way around.
“Have you worked in printing before?” Billy asks.
Hob pulls out his charming smile. “Ask me at the end of the day, sir, and I shall tell you I have.”
Billy snorts then points at Hazm. “Put him on the press.”
“Brian is on the press, Charlie was ink.”
“I well know, Hazm, but I won’t have a man on his first day only half inking a typeset and wasting good paper. Press for him, ink for Brian.”
“As you say.”
Hazm touches Hob’s shoulder and steers him down back down the hall they came and into the large open room.
“Brian!” Hazm shouts.
A redhead pops up near the wall. “Sir?”
“We have a new partner for you. You’re inking, he’ll be on your press.”
“But sir, I –”
“Bring a type set for The Royal Book,” Hazm says before Brian protests further then gestures to Hob. “Follow me,” Hazm says, leading Hob over to one vacant machine as Brian joins them on the opposite side.
“So, whole work up isn’t too difficult, especially since you won’t be doing the type setting. You’ll already have that.” He points to a set of four squares full of metal letters in rows which Brian just placed on the main stone bed of the otherwise wooden machine. “Paper goes here on the tympan,” Hazm explains pointing to another flat wood extension on a hinge. “Paper has to be damp.” Hazm points finger in Hob’s face.
“Damp?” Hob says questionably.
“Damp,” Hazm and Brian say together. “Helps the ink stay,” Hazm continues. “Pin the paper in place, close the frisket so you don’t get ink elsewhere on the page.” Hazm closes the empty tympan then folds it down atop the type set page. “Brian would have inked that type by now. Brian steps back and you roll the whole in here.” Hazm pushes the box forward underneath what is undoubtedly the press as it looks like a gigantic screw. Hazm then reaches up and grabs the leaver near Brian’s head. He pulls his arm back toward where he and Hob stand so the screw twists around and pushes down upon the box. Hob watches the man’s muscles flex with the effort. He understands the ‘strong’ question now. “Pull as hard as you can. Has to go all the way over to this other side, half way isn’t enough or you’ll end up with a page you can only half read, right?”
“Sure.”
Hazm lets go of the lever and it swings back into place, the screw winding back up. “Take it out, hang the paper to dry, move on to the next page. Clear?”
“Paper, frame, ink, screw, very clear.”
“And hang to dry!” Brian pipes up.
Hob glances at him, thinks he looks about eighteen with arms like tree branches, and nods. “Yes, sir.”
Hazm sighs. “Don’t waste too much paper on mistakes, all right then?”
Hob grins wide. “Very much yes, sir.”
Hazm blinks once, sighs again then turns away. Hob decides as long as they don’t kick him out by day’s end he will get that man to laugh.
“Right, ready?” Brian asks, suddenly holding what looks like two rotting cow udders.
“What in the lord’s name are those?”
Brian laughs once. “Ink, silly.”
“That would explain why they are black.”
“What other color should the ink be, eh?” He gestures with his ink bags at the press. “Open her up again and let’s get a page on, okay?”
Hob blows out a breath, looks around at the other pairs of printers, pages full of text and images piling up around him, a wonder of the new world, and pushes up his sleeves with a grin. “As you say, young sir.”
Hob thinks if they keep him on long enough he might have to learn how to read what they end up printing.
Even if the trade seems like something meant for the rich and hardly one to last – after all, how many people can really afford books – it should do for two years, which is all he needs right now. Only two years until he hits one hundred years and meets the Stranger for the second time.
Robert ‘Hob’ Gadling sits at a table right beside the fire in the White Horse Tavern of London. The establishment has changed a little since Hob’s seminal visit a hundred years past – new furniture, chimneys to banish the fire smoke, better ale, new window glass and a new door. The atmosphere of cheer, jokes and complaints remains the same. Hob watches those around him, wondering at which may have fought in the war, how long some may live, were they born in London, have they traveled from far away or never left the city, what would they think if he should tell them about the tavern of a hundred years back full of the same hopes and fears?
When Hob turns his head back to the chair across his small table, the Stranger sits down in it. Hob breathes in slowly, his mug still held up in his hand. Hob worried after he passed fifty or sixty years of extended life that he might forget what the Stranger looks like. He barely recalls his sister now, dead at sixteen, and his parents’ faces he recalls more as blurs. Yet the Stranger across from him looks like the most prefect painting out of his memory made into reality. The Stranger’s dress has changed but his pale face, dark hair and eyes – that expression from somewhere far above Hob – appear unchanged, as young as the day Hob saw him last, just like Hob.
The Stranger sits tall and rigid and looks directly at Hob when he says, “Hob Gadling.”
Hob puts his mug down, just realizing he still holds it up in the air as he stares.
“How did you know I’d still be here?” Hob blurts out.
He pulls his hands into his lap, some of that fear returning as to just who or what this man may be. Then Hob asks the more important question, the one that has followed him for a hundred years. “Who are you?”