The Nine Giants Read online

  ‘Walk towards that alley or I finish you here.’

  The book holder pretended to agree. In the heaving mass of a market day, he had no choice. His assailant had caught him off guard and was now easing him towards a narrow alley. Once he entered that, Nicholas knew, he would never come out again alive. He tried to distract the man.

  ‘You are Master Renfrew, I think.’

  ‘Then must you think again, sir.’

  ‘There is no patch over your eye?’

  ‘No, sir. I see well enough to stab you in the back.’

  ‘Do you lodge at a house on the Bridge?’

  ‘That is of no concern to you.’

  ‘Did you play with fire the other night?’

  ‘Keep moving,’ grunted the man.

  As Nicholas was prodded by the dagger again, he reacted with sudden urgency. Hs free arm struck out at the canopy of a market stall while a heel was jabbed hard into the shin of his captor. Wrenching his other arm away at the same time, he lurched forward a few paces then swung around to confront the man who was now hopping on one leg and trying to disentangle himself from the canopy while being abused by the stallholder. Nicholas had only a few seconds to study the swarthy, bearded face before the bull-like frame came hurtling angrily at him. He caught the wrist that held the dagger and grappled with his attacker. Uproar now spread as the two men cannoned off the bodies all around them. The irate stallholder joined in the fight with a broom which he used to belabour both of them.

  The assailant was strong but Nicholas was a match for him. Recognising this, the man made a last desperate effort to seize the advantage, angling the dagger towards the other’s body and thrusting home with all his might. The book holder took evasive action in the nick of time. He turned the man’s wrist sharply and sent the blade towards the latter’s stomach. The animal howl of pain was so loud and frightening that it silenced the crowd and even made the stallholder hold off with his broom. With a surge of strength, the man flung off Nicholas and ran off through the crowd with bullocking force. The book holder looked down at the front of his jerkin.

  It was spattered with blood that was not his own.

  Triumph was followed by setback. After his victory in the field on the previous afternoon, Lawrence Firethorn came off badly in skirmishes the next day. It began at home with a spectacular row over the household accounts. He fought hard but his wife was at her most vehement and sent him off with his ears ringing. No comfort awaited him at the Queen’s Head. His first encounter was with Edmund Hoode who refused outright to provide any more verses for the actor-manager’s romantic purposes and backed up that refusal with the threat of quitting the company. While Firethorn was still recovering from that shock, Barnaby Gill chose his moment to praise the fine performance given by Owen Elias in Love and Fortune and to let his colleague know that he was in danger of being eclipsed by one of the hired men. There was worse to come. Alexander Marwood sidled past with a hideous smile to announce that he had now decided to sign a contract with Rowland Ashway for the sale of the inn.

  When he had received Matilda Stanford in a private room, he had felt like a king. That was yesterday. Today his subjects were in armed revolt and he could not put them down. He prowled the yard at the Queen’s Head while he tried to compose himself. It was the worst possible time to accost him with a handful of poems.

  ‘Good day, Master Firethorn.’

  ‘Who are you?’ snarled the other.

  ‘Abel Strudwick. I believe that you know of me.’

  ‘As much as I care to, sir. Away with you!’

  ‘But Master Bracewell mentioned my name.’

  ‘What care I for that?’

  ‘I am a poet, sir. I would perform on the scaffold.’

  ‘Then get yourself hanged for ugliness,’ said the irate Firethorn. ‘You may twitch on the gallows and provide good entertainment for the lower sort.’

  Strudwick bristled. ‘What say you, sir?’

  ‘Avoid my sight, you thing of hair!’

  ‘I am a water poet!’

  ‘Then piss your verses up against a wall, sir.’

  ‘I looked for more civility than this.’

  ‘You have come to the wrong shop.’

  ‘So I see,’ said the waterman, casting aside his former reverence for the actor. ‘But I’ll not be put down by you, sir, you strutting peacock with a face like a dying donkey, you whoreson, glass-gazing, beard-trimming cozener!’

  ‘Will you bandy words with me, sir!’ roared Firethorn with teeth bared. ‘Take that epileptic visage away from here before it frights the souls of honest folk. I’ll not talk to you, you knave, you rascal, you rag-wearing son of Satan. Stand off, sir, and take that stink with you.’

  ‘I am as wholesome a man as you, Master Firethorn, and will not give way to a brazen-faced lecher who opens his mouth but to fart out villainy.’

  ‘You bawd, you beggar, you slave!’

  ‘Thief, coward, rogue!’

  ‘Dog’s-head!’

  ‘Trendle-tail!’

  ‘Hedge-bird!’

  ‘You walking quagmire!’

  Abel Strudwick cackled at the insult and circled his man to attack again. Having come to offer poetry, he was instead trading invective. It was exhilarating.

  ‘Your father was a pox-riddled pimp!’ he yelled.

  ‘Your mother, Mistress Slither, conceived you in a fathom of foul mud. She was mounted by a rutting boar and dropped you in her next litter, the old sow.’

  ‘Snotty nose!’

  ‘Pig face!’

  ‘Pandar!’

  ‘Mongrel!’

  Strudwick grinned. ‘Your wife, sir, under pretence of keeping a decent home, cuckolds you with every gamester in the city. Diseased she is, surely, and dragged through the cesspits of whoredom by the hour. Even as we speak, some lusty bachelor is riding her pell mell to damnation!’

  Firethorn writhed at the insult and replied in kind. The volume and intensity of the argument had risen so much by now that a small crowd had formed to cheer and jibe and urge the combatants on. It was a fascinating contest with advantage swinging first one way and then the other. Firethorn had clear vocal superiority and used all the tricks of his art to subdue the waterman. Strudwick had greater experience on his side and vituperation gushed out of him in an endless, inventive stream. Actor met streetfighter in a war of words. It was at the point where they were about to exchange blows that Nicholas Bracewell came running across the yard and dived between them to hold them off.

  ‘Peace, sirs!’ he exclaimed. ‘Stand apart.’

  ‘I’ll run this black devil through!’ said Firethorn.

  ‘I’ll tear his liver out and eat it!’ said Strudwick.

  ‘Calm down and talk this over as friends.’

  ‘Friends!’ howled the waterman.

  ‘Mortal enemies,’ said Firethorn. ‘I’d not befriend this whelp if he was the last man alive in creation.’

  ‘Let me be judge of this quarrel,’ said Nicholas.

  But they were too inflamed for a reasoned discussion of their complaints. They eyed each other aggressively like two dogs bred for fighting. Since the book holder was still keeping them apart, they resolved on another form of attack. Abel Strudwick waved a sheaf of poems in the air and glared at Firethorn.

  ‘I challenge you to a flyting contest, sir!’ he said.

  ‘Let it be in public,’ retorted the other.

  ‘Upon the stage in this yard.’

  ‘Before a full audience.’

  ‘Name the day and the time.’

  ‘Next Monday,’ said Firethorn. ‘Be here at one. When the clock strikes the half-hour, we’ll begin.’

  ‘My waterman’s wit will destroy you utterly.’

  ‘Take care you do not drown yourself in it.’

  ‘I will bring friends to support me.’

  ‘All London knows my reputation.’

  ‘Stop, sirs,’ said Nicholas. ‘This is madness.’

  But his pl
eas went unheard. Pride dictated terms. Lawrence Firethorn and Abel Strudwick had gone too far to pull back now. They would continue their duel on the following Monday with sharper weapons.

  It would be a fight to the death.

  Chapter Nine

  The sky over Windsor was dark and swollen as the funeral cortège walked solemnly up the path to St John’s Church. Only a select gathering of family and friends had been invited to watch Lieutenant Michael Delahaye lowered into his final resting place. The priest led the way in white surplice and black cassock with his prayer book open in his hands. Six bearers carried the elm coffin with its ornate brass handles and its small brass commemorative plate. The widowed mother led the procession, leaning for support on the arm of her brother, Walter Stanford, and weeping copiously. Next came her four daughters, each one stricken by the loss, each one helped along by a husband. Black was the predominant colour and Matilda Stanford, who came next, wore a taffeta dress trimmed with black lace and a matching hat with a black veil. Leaning on the arm of her stepson, she wept genuine tears of sorrow and her sympathy for the bereaved was clear to see. Behind her came more figures in black and more lamentation. Michael Delahaye was going out of the world on a tide of grief.

  The service was accompanied throughout by sobs, cries and moans as suffering mourners tried to come to terms both with the death of the dear departed and with the brutal nature of that death. Walter Stanford had deemed it wise to keep back the worst details of the horror. His sister and the rest of the family had enough misery to accommodate as it was. They had all been fearful when Michael had announced his intention of joining the army that set out for the Netherlands. His safe return was a cause for celebration and they had planned a small banquet in his honour. Instead of a long table loaded with rich food and fine wine, they were marking his homecoming with funeral bakemeats.

  Matilda Stanford went through it all in a daze. The church was filled with so much high emotion that she was overwhelmed and heard very little of the service that was being intoned by the vicar. Only when the coffin was taken out into the graveyard and interred in the family vault did she come out of her reverie and she felt a stab of shame that gave her a prickly sensation. She was not thinking about Michael Delahaye, nor yet about his poor mother, nor even about her husband’s grievous pain. She was not listening to any of the muttered words of comfort that were heard all round her as they began to disperse. She was not succumbing to notions of death itself and how it might visit her when the hour drew near.

  At a funeral, in a graveyard, close to her husband and in the midst of a family tragedy, she found herself toying with a vision of Lawrence Firethorn. Guilt made her weep the most bitter tears yet and an arm tightened on hers.

  But her mind still belonged to the actor.

  After a week of upheavals, it was good to get away from the pressures of the city and out into the freedom of the countryside. A fire at his lodging, an attempt on his life and a puzzling encounter at the house on the Bridge had made Nicholas Bracewell more cautious than ever and he kept glancing over his shoulder to make sure that they were not being followed. It was Sunday morning and he had been instructed by Lawrence Firethorn to ride down to Richmond to take stock of the Nine Giants where the company was due to perform in the near future. Nicholas took Hans Kippel with him so that he could guard the boy and – because she was born there – Anne Hendrik went beside him on the road to Richmond. The book holder was mounted on a chestnut mare with the apprentice clinging on behind him. Anne rode a dapple grey with an easy gait.

  It had every appearance of a family outing and this was one of its objects. They had not simply taken on a parental responsibility for Hans Kippel. His damaged mind responded to a sense of familial reassurance and it was only when he was at his most relaxed that his memory began to function properly again. In taking him away from London itself, Nicholas hoped to separate the boy from the well-spring of his malady. The country air of Richmond might do wonders for the lad’s power of recall. At all events, they made a happy picture, moving along at a rising trot and urging the horses into a gentle canter when the terrain invited it.

  The book holder was relieved to put the week behind him. Quite apart from personal crises, it had been an extremely taxing period. He had stage-managed four very different plays for Westfield’s Men as well as coping with sundry other duties. Placating Edmund Hoode had proved to be a time-consuming pastime and the ambitious Owen Elias was another constant drain on his patience. Regular sessions with Alexander Marwood had been another burden and Lawrence Firethorn’s demands were endless. Then there was the problem of the versifying waterman.

  Hans Kippel raised the problem from the bobbing rump of the horse.

  ‘May I go to the Queen’s Head tomorrow?’

  ‘I think not,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘But I wish to see Master Strudwick on the stage.’

  ‘It is not for your young eyes,’ decided Anne. ‘And certainly not for your young ears. London watermen use the vilest language in Christendom.’

  ‘But Master Strudwick makes music.’

  Nicholas smiled. ‘He has another kind of harmony in mind for tomorrow, Hans. I will report everything back to you, have no fear.’

  ‘Who will win the flyting contest?’

  ‘Neither, if I have my way. It will not take place.’

  The boy was disappointed but a half-mile taken at a canter obliged him to hold on tight and suspend his questioning. It was not long before Richmond Palace came into sight to focus all their attention. Overlooking the Thames with regal condescension, it was a magnificent building in the Gothic style, constructed round a paved court and rising up with turreted splendour. Even on such a dull day, its gilded weathervanes added a romantic sparkle and its superfluity of windows lent it an almost crystalline charm. Hans Kippel was awestruck. Glimpsed over the shoulder of his friend, Richmond Palace had a fairy-tale quality that enchanted him.

  The village itself had grown steadily throughout the century as more and more people moved out of the plague-ridden city to its healthier suburbs. Many of the local inhabitants gained their livelihood from the Palace itself and it dominated their existence in every way. Nicholas escorted Anne to a cottage on the far side of the village and stayed long enough to witness the tearful reunion with her parents. Hans Kippel was lifted off the sweating chestnut to share in the hospitality. Nicholas rode back across the wide expanse of village green to get to the inn he had come to visit.

  One glance told him that the Nine Giants would be ideal for their purposes. It was larger and altogether more generous in its proportions than the Queen’s Head. Erected around a paved courtyard, it had three galleries with thatched roofs. Its timber framing gave it the magpie colouring of most London houses but it was vastly cleaner and more well preserved than its equivalents in the city. Not for the first time, Nicholas reflected on how much filth and pollution a large population could generate. Richmond was truly picturesque. The smile had not been wiped off its face by the crude elbows of the urban multitude. A presenting feature of the inn was the cluster of oak trees which gave it its name. Rising high and wide out of the paddock at the rear, they formed a rough circle of timber that had an almost mystic quality. The nine giants were soon joined by a tenth.

  ‘Good day to you, master.’

  ‘And to you, good sir.’

  ‘Welcome to our hostelry.’

  ‘It is a fine establishment you have here.’

  ‘I’ll be with you anon.’

  Nicholas had come into the yard to see a huge barrel being carried aloft by a giant of a man in a leather apron. He was loading up a brewer’s dray with empty casks from the cellar and the work was making him grunt. The book holder dismounted and tethered his horse to a post. At that moment, the man dropped his barrel onto the dray with a terrifying thud then wiped his hands on his apron. Nicholas saw his face properly for the first time and laughed with sheer astonishment.

  ‘Leonard!’

 
‘Is that you, Master Bracewell?’

  ‘Come here, dear fellow!’

  They embraced warmly then stood back to appraise each other. Nicholas could not believe what he saw.

  His friend had come back from the grave.

  The thickset man lay on the bed with heavy bandaging around his midriff. His self-inflicted wound had been serious but not fatal and he was recovering with the aid of regular flagons of bottle ale. James Renfrew looked down at him with mild disgust.

  ‘Drink wine and cultivate some manners,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll look to my own pleasures, Jamie.’

  ‘How do you feel today, sir?’

  ‘Better.’

  ‘Can you stand?’

  ‘Stand and walk and carry a weapon.’

  ‘There’ll be time enough for that.’

  ‘He is mine,’ hissed the other.

  ‘Master Bracewell?’

  ‘Look what he did to me. I want him.’

  ‘The boy is our main concern. He is a witness.’

  ‘I’ll pluck his Dutch eyes out!’ He glanced up at the black patch and blurted out a clumsy apology. ‘I am … sorry, Jamie. I did … not mean to …’

  ‘Enough of that!’ said Renfrew sharply. ‘Hold your peace and get some rest.’

  ‘Has the time been set?’

  ‘It is all in hand.’

  ‘When is it?’

  ‘You will be told, Firk.’

  ‘Give me but a day or two and …’

  ‘The plan is conceived, have no fear. We will not move without your help. It will be needed.’

  ‘And Master Bracewell?’

  ‘That will come, too. That will come, too.’

  Renfrew crossed to the window of the bedchamber and surveyed the river below. It was a forest of rigging that rose and fell on the undulating surface. He watched a boat being rowed expertly across the Thames and followed it until it vanished from sight behind a larger vessel.

  Renfrew threw a nonchalant question over his shoulder.

  ‘Firk …’

  ‘What?’