‘Will you sit, Tom?’ Pat was there as arranged, toying with his pipe, filling the bowl with threads of chestnut tobacco.
Tom nodded, chose the stool beside him. Both men wanted their backs to the wall.
Pat worked the pipe, tamped and lit it, drew the smoke deep and long before exhaling. A slattern wiped dregs of ale from tables and benches with a filthy cloth. An old man was slumped at the bar, snores rumbling through the wood. Too quiet for Tom’s likiing. He preferred a crowd, a melee to be lost in.
He felt something brush his knee, felt the package in its oil cloth wrappings and his pulse raise with the holding of it.
Pat winked. ‘Mind how you go.’
With the package under his coat, Tom stepped back into the hive of Lower Bridge Street, back into the melee.
Reading more about the Brazen Head, I learned it has been a meeting place not only for thinkers and writers but also revolutionaries, so I thought I’d conjure a couple of the latter.
Written for What pegman saw, a prompt using Google Streetview. See here to join in and to read the other tales.
Word Shamble 