The apprentices sat down at their table - one table for each dormitory - and passed their bowls hand-over-hand to the heads of their tables. Each table had a steaming cauldron set on it, put there by the kitchen skivvies. The head boy of each dormitory would then take the bowls and fill them one-at-a-time from the great pot.
This was how Marco had always lived. He had lived in the guildhouse for as long as he could remember: from when he was a mewling foundling in an iron-barred cot, to now as a boy sprouting his first fuzz. The social order of the guildhouse was simple. You began at the bottom of the table and, as you grew older, wiser or just plain meaner, you rose to become the head boy. Marco had been the head boy of his junior dormitory. But, having moved to a senior dormitory, he was once again at the bottom.
"Bowls," Bevis commanded. The boys passed the bowls up the table, the stack growing taller the further up the table it went. Today's dinner was a vegetable soup thickened with barley. Bevis took a bowl from the top of the stack and filled it from the cauldron. And then -
Marco's eyes widened as Bevis picked through the soup to extract a lump of vegetable matter and put it back in the pot, before returning the bowl to its owner. He did this with every bowl, saving the best and thickest parts of the soup for himself.
Marco protested. "Hey! That's not fair!"
Bevis ignored him, and started to eat.
"I said it's not fair!" Marco's voice cut through the chatter of the refectory, attracting the attention of one of the beadles.
"What is the problem?" the official asked.
"It's nothing, sir," Bevis said, and glared at Marco as if challenging him to speak out against him.
The beadle looked at Marco. "Is this true?"
Marco looked away. "Yes, sir." Being denied his dinner was an injustice, but to collaborate with the beadles was unthinkable.
The beadle grunted and pointed at Bevis. "Keep your charges disciplined," he said, then walked away.
In the dormitory, after dinner, Bevis gave vent to his anger at being challenged. Two of his cronies had Marco in an iron grip, while Bevis punished him hard and viciously. By the time he was done, Marco had a black eye, a bloody nose and a split lip.
"It is not stealing," Bevis explained to the younger boy. "It's payment."
Marco coughed up blood. "Payment?"
"Payment." Bevis rubbed his swollen knuckles. "If you pay me, then I protect you. That's the deal."
"What are you protecting me from?"
Bevis yanked Marco's blood-stained undershirt up, showing it to the hapless apprentice. "This," he said.
