Soldiers in Black Coats

“Can’t you talk about something other than politics?” muttered Thomas sleepily. “It’s depressing.”1

“I’m sorry,” said Matthew, drawing himself closer to Thomas’s back, wrapping his arms around more tightly and stroking him, feeling the slim curve of his stomach through his silk nightshirt. “Better things to talk about at night I suppose.”2

“Talk more about how you’re going to steal me away and take me overseas and less about how you’re going to overthrow the Guard at the same time.”3

“Okay, okay.” Matthew placed a soft kiss on the back of Thomas’s neck, causing him to chuckle softly. “We’ll do it early one morning, only a few hours later than it is now. I’ll have got us the scruffiest clothes you can imagine to wear, by the time the sun rises we’ll be out in the depths of the town, blending in with everything and everyone around us, just two lost urchins swept from their dwelling place in the tide of working class folk rushing up and down the streets as the night shifts end and the day shifts begin.”4

“Bet it’ll stink,” giggled Thomas.5

“Don’t be rude. You’d stink too if you had to live that life. I know I did, before I was able to come here. It’s all because the Guard don’t care about the common…”6

“Please. You said.”7

“I know. It just riles me, that’s all.”8

“And where will we go then? We’re still at war, don’t forget. That’s the reason the Guard’s in control in the first place.”9

“I’ll think of something, don’t you worry.”10

Thomas rolled over to lie on his other side, slipping deep into Matthew’s embrace and seeking his lips for a long tender kiss. Within ten minutes, he was asleep in the other boy’s arms.11

Matthew had always been an early riser, one of a number of small details in his personality that irked Thomas somewhat, though obviously not too much. By the time Thomas first stirred the following morning, bags under his eyes and his hair looking something akin to a haystack, Matthew was already sitting on the side of his own bed on the other side of the twin room, a lace shirt on his shoulders, tucked into a pair of black breeches. Sitting up in a daze and stretching, Thomas watched him slipping on bright yellow hose before tightening the ribbons in his breeches and tying them in bows, as a means of persuading his eyes that it was worth their while staying open whatever his tired lids were saying to the contrary.12

“You’d best get a move on, Tom dear,” Matthew said to the boy in the bed, groaning like a freshly risen zombie. “You know as well as any the masters aren’t beyond handing out a quick thrashing for missing breakfast. Plus how could you get through your day without that bowl of rich man’s porridge? Peasant’s porridge I assure you simply does not compare, you can taste the gold in the stuff here as far as I’m concerned.”13

Thomas shook his head pityingly. “I can never work out who taught you to talk like that. Are you sure you grew up down in the town?”14

“My old man, as I have told you many a time, fancies himself as a bit of a writer. Not that it’s ever going to come to anything while the Guard are in charge and cannons fire from Granary Point, of course. Now get up.” He slipped his silver-lined black doublet on and began fastening the buttons. By the time Thomas had made it into his underpants, his room-mate and sometime literal bedfellow had put his latchets onto his feet, pulled the leather thongs threaded through each tight and tied them in first knots, then neatly looped bows, leaving him to sit back and watch. Thomas, still almost naked, frowned at the smirk that had spread over Matthew’s face as he looked on and made a point of turning his back to him.15

“Pervert,” he muttered.16

Life at the Hall, these days a Guard sponsored institution with a uniform to match, was, Matthew had quickly learned, one of alternating peaceful quiet and raucous noise. The tender, near silent intimacy of his and Thomas’s room had been followed with the boisterous commotion of a breakfast hall full of brash, teenage boys, followed on weekdays by hushed lessons and on weekends, such as that day, a walk through the quieter and more scenic parts of the school’s grounds, of which he and Thomas had these days made a habit.17

A cool, mid-morning breeze ruffled their hair and clothes as they walked together down the little path that weaved its way through the garden. This way took one to the Hall’s outer wall, built atop a towering chalk cliff, over which one could look at the jagged splendour of the entrance to the Old Keep, these days commandeered by the Guard, all high walkways and steep drops down to the deadly rocks in the cove below. Two Guardsmen kept watch by the door of the keep itself, an imposing structure, flat walls and sharp corners, rising up into the sky, a monolith dedicated to man’s desperate need to protect himself from perceived enemies.18

The Guardsmen were dressed head to foot in black, black shoes, black hose, black breeches, black shirts under velvet lined black coats, even black gloves. Over this, they wore steel back and breast, polished till their reflected luminescence near equalled that of the sun that shone high in the sky, with similarly well maintained morions on their heads and gleaming pikes in their hands, swords at their hips. Matthew tried not to look at them.19

“Even from this far away, they reek of wealth and excess,” he said quietly. Black fabric was expensive, the most expensive of all, and wearing so much of it, Matthew thought, was nothing short of disgusting.20

“But so do we,” pointed out Thomas, indicating the clothes that Matthew and he himself were wearing.21

“But we only wear it because it’s our uniform,” Matthew protested.22

“So do they.”23

“Hmmph, anyone would think you were on their side.”24

“Of course I’m not. I’m just saying surely we should blame whoever’s in charge rather than the footmen at the door.”25

“But who is in charge? Who controls the Guard? Who insists on fighting this war?”26

Thomas could only shrug. He suddenly longed to embrace Matthew, to prove to him that he really was on his side, but he couldn’t be sure that no-one was watching. After all, outside their room, they could only be friends, nothing more.27

“I wouldn’t mind if the Guards fought,” Matthew said. “But they don’t. The Greycoats fight, are fighting now. That’s how it works, the Greycoats come from the workers and fight, the Guard come from the rich families and strut around, and whoever is in charge of the Guard, probably the richest of the lot, sits in that keep and rules everything, never letting us even see his face.”28

A cannon boomed, firing out to sea from Granary Point. Matthew and Thomas stood, looking out, in silence.29

“When are we going to leave?” asked Thomas eventually.30

“Soon,” was Matthew’s only reply.31

Looking back at Matthew, dressed from head to foot in expensive clothes, his skin the healthy tone of the well looked after, Thomas couldn’t help but suspect that they never would.32