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Late August 1533. The
day had been sunny, and the sky was still clear and sharp. The river had an
autumnal calm, carrying with it memories of sun-baked summer days. There was,
as yet, no hint of the winter to come. “The calm before the storm,” said the
boatman, lifting his weather-beaten face to the sky. He glanced at the young
boy at his side. “Last drop of summer before the cold sets in.”
The child watched and
listened. He knew the older man well enough to wait for more.
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The boatman returned his gaze to the sky.
“Bright days and cold nights,” he murmured, as if he were now unaware of his
audience. “Freezing nights by Christmas, and then look out!”
“What shall I look out for, Uncle?” said the boy,
trying to read the wrinkled face for a clue of what was to come.
“Look out for thyself, boy, that’s what! Look
out for thy kith and kin and make sure there’s wood on the fire and food in thy
belly. There’s many a young ‘un died o’ cold on a winter’s night, with no cover
on ‘is back and no food in ‘is belly.”
They made an odd pair:
the ferryman with his gnarled, work-worn fingers and the young boy, no more
than nine years old, but eager to learn.
Thomas Smythe had started life some forty-eight years
before, in a village on the edge of the city of London. His father was a
village blacksmith who earned a good living from the farmers working the local
fields and those passing through on their way to the city. The weary travellers
would stop to have their horses shod and to refresh themselves at the inn,
where Mistress Lucy would delight them with foaming ale and steaming pastry
pies full of turnips and onions.
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Thomas would have followed his father into the trade,
had his older brothers not been there first. He was one of seven sons. Fourteen
children had been born to the blacksmith and his wife, but the family had lost
four of them, born dead or dead within a month of their birth and that was only
to be expected. Life was hard for most, and you were lucky to survive your
early years and even luckier to live beyond the age of forty-five. A poor
harvest and a bitter winter could wipe out the population of whole villages.
The young and the old died first.
The year that Thomas was
born, a new king, Henry Tudor, had marched victoriously into London. With him
came the peace and prosperity in which the boy had grown, and an end to the
civil war that had raged through England and Wales, snatching farmers and their
sons from orchard and field and leaving them dead or wounded far from their
homes.
The young Welsh King had united the warring royal
families by marrying Elizabeth of York and combining the red and white roses of
the two houses, York and Lancaster.
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King Henry’s new Tudor rose — red with a white centre
— was an image to be carried, copied, worn, and drawn throughout England.
Thomas was eleven
years old when he set off along the country lanes, bound for the city of
London. He had the clothes he stood up in and a fine pair of leather lace-up
shoes, made for him by his older brother Ben, who was apprentice to the
shoemaker in the village.
Thomas found work
on the barges, a regular, bustling trade, ferrying passengers along and between
the muddy banks of the River Thames. London’s streets were then crowded,
filthy, and often dangerous. There was, as yet, only one bridge across the
river — London Bridge — and it, too, was narrow, dark, and crammed with shops
and houses. The watermen and their fleets of sturdy wooden boats did a thriving
business with travellers who had good reason to avoid the roads.
Work on the river
meant rising at dawn and sleeping on the boat, or in a warehouse at the
riverside if you were really lucky, or the river was frozen.