The Nine Giants Read online

  Firethorn was half-naked by the time he launched himself onto the four-poster, landing beside his love and pulling back the sheets to behold the beauty of her face. His first kiss was to have ignited her passion to the utmost limit but his lips instead met with cold response. He soon saw why. Instead of holding Matilda Stanford, he had his arms around a squirming maidservant whose mouth was covered with a thick rag.

  Prudence Ling had been bound and gagged.

  Nicholas Bracewell was hurrying back towards the Nine Giants when the actor-manager came tumbling out in search of him to announce the kidnap. The coachman had now been alerted as well and discovered that his coach had been stolen. Others came pouring out of the inn to see what the commotion was all about. The book holder gave his grisly news then raced off to the stables to find a horse and lead the posse in pursuit of the coach. He had instantly worked out who the driver must be and wanted to take him to task about Hans Kippel as well. A dozen armed men were soon in the saddle. Nicholas split them into two groups so that they could scour the road in both directions. The horses were soon spurred into a mad gallop as the chase began.

  It was only twenty minutes before they caught sight of the coach. Nicholas was at the head of the group which rode furiously along the London Road and sent up clods of earth in their wake. When he saw the coach cresting a rise up ahead so that its profile was seen momentarily against the sky, he called for even more speed and commitment from his mount. Though the vehicle was being driven hard, it could never outrun the chasing pack and they closed steadily on it. The driver put his own survival first. Heaving on the reins, he pulled the two horses to a juddering halt then leapt from the box into the saddle of the animal who had been tethered to the coach and pulled along with it. To create a diversion, he yelled at the top of his voice and slapped one of the coach horses on the rump. Both of them bolted at once and the vehicle was taken on a mad, swinging, bumping journey across the grass.

  Nicholas’s immediate concern was the safety of the passenger inside the coach and he set off after it. With a wave of his hand, he sent his fellows off after the lone rider who was moving at a full gallop towards the shelter of a small wood. The coach was now completely out of control and swayed dangerously from side to side. It lurched high in the air as one of its wheels struck a large stone then it veered over at a crazy angle as it was pulled across a slope. Nicholas knew that it was only a matter of time before the vehicle overturned or smashed into a tree. He used his heels to demand even more from his mount and slowly caught up with the coach, keeping well clear of the whirring wheels as they swung towards him. Above the din, he could hear the screams of the terrified occupant as she was thrown wildly around.

  Pulling level with the bolting horses, he timed his moment then dived sideways onto the back of the nearest animal and held on grimly to the harness. When he had hauled himself up and sat astride the horse, he gathered up the reins and applied steady pressure until the headlong flight became a measured canter then eventually diminished to a merciful trot. When he finally pulled them to a stop, he jumped down and ran to open the coach door. Tied hand and foot, Matilda Stanford fell into his arms.

  An evening of happiness and light ended in a darker vein. The body of Firk was taken away to the local undertaker and a statement about his death given to the county coroner. Matilda Stanford and Prudence Ling were driven on to Wimbledon by the coachman to pass a restorative night with the cousin. Along with the rest of the company, Lawrence Firethorn was shocked by the attempted hanging of Owen Elias. He took Nicholas Bracewell up to his room so that the full details could emerge in private.

  The book holder was explicit and unfolded the tale without any trimmings. Murder, arson, riot, kidnap and municipal corruption were revealed in their true light. Firethorn heard it all with immense interest, feeling for the plight of Owen Elias and coming to see how his own wilful involvement with Matilda Stanford had indirectly led to it. If she had not been enticed to the Nine Giants to satisfy him, then the Welshman would still be able to contribute his skills to the company instead of languishing in bed with a bandaged neck. The actor-manager was ashamed and shaken but his priorities remained unchanged. When Rowland Ashway was named as the architect of all the villainy, Firethorn saw it entirely in personal terms and actually grinned.

  ‘If the alderman be arrested,’ he said jauntily, ‘then will his contract with Marwood be null and void. Westfield’s Men will stay at the Queen’s Head. Some good may yet come of all the upset I have borne!’

  Nicholas had to exhibit supreme self-control.

  Next day found Lawrence Firethorn at his best. He assembled the company early on and delivered a moving speech about the importance of overcoming all the setbacks they had endured. Concern for Owen Elias was understandable but the best way to speed his recovery was to put on the finest performance they could manage. In the space of ten minutes, Firethorn transformed a jaded group of men into an alert and determined theatre company. Nicholas had returned from his earlier visit to the Nine Giants with sketches and measurements of the acting area. It did not take long to erect a stage to begin rehearsal.

  They heard the bells from the wedding nearby and gave a rousing welcome to the bride and groom when they arrived at the inn to begin the celebrations. Fine weather enabled the banquet to be served in the yard itself and the whole gathering was in excellent spirits by the time the play was due. Lord Westfield himself was the guest of honour, sitting beside the bride in his flamboyant attire and telling her that he would now give his wedding present. Westfield’s Men took over.

  The Wise Woman of Dunstable could not have been a more appropriate choice. It was a pastoral comedy about the virtues of true love and fidelity. Three suitors vied for the hand of a rich and beautiful widow who wanted nothing more than to live quietly in happy contemplation of her departed husband. All sorts of stratagems were employed to get her to the altar, the most ludicrous by Lord Merrymouth, an egregious old fop with a game leg. Firethorn showed brilliant comic invention in this role and equipped the posturing peer with all sorts of humorous ailments. The widow herself finally agreed to make a choice and everyone thought it would be between the two young, handsome suitors. But the ghost of her former husband – Edmund Hoode at his best – came back to give her sage advice. She chose Lord Merrymouth.

  This not only put the other over-amorous gentlemen to flight, it ensured her widowhood, for the old aristocrat was so overwhelmed with pleasure that he drank himself to a stupor then fell into a pond and drowned. Firethorn even made the death scene unbearably comic. In the title role itself, Richard Honeydew was a wise woman of great charm and lightness of heart. The play ended with a dance then the audience pounded their tables in appreciation. Westfield’s Men bowed in acknowledgement of their rapturous reception then went into their closing dance once more by way of an encore. Led by Firethorn, they directed their final bow at the window through which Owen Elias had watched their performance. Still in pain from his ordeal, he applauded with gusto and the tears ran down his cheeks. Westfield’s Men had given him the most exhilarating tonic. He belonged.

  Walter Stanford’s face was designed for mirth and good humour but it was furrowed by anger and disillusion now. At the suggestion of Nicholas Bracewell, his wife had set up an interview between the two men in a private room at the Royal Exchange so that the household steward at Stanford Place would not be aware of the net that was now closing in on him. The Lord Mayor Elect first thanked the book holder profusely for saving the life of his young bride by stopping the runaway horses, though her reason for being at the Nine Giants in the first place was tactfully concealed from her husband. No intimacy had occurred between her and Firethorn. She would not go astray again.

  Nicholas had been right in his instincts. Once the connection between Rowland Ashway and Aubrey Kenyon was made, much was explained. With a sudden increase in wealth, the brewer was able to buy up the inns and taverns to whom he supplied his beer. Stanford suspected a whole network
of corruption in the conduct of municipal affairs with the Chamberlain at the centre. Only he would be in a position to mastermind such financial chicanery. With a willing but credulous man like Sir Lucas Pugsley as Lord Mayor, the two men had been able to feather their own nests without the slightest suspicion falling on them. Ashway worked on the fishmonger as a friend while Kenyon used his expertise as an administrator to pull the wool over the latter’s eyes. They were a potent combination.

  Their reign was threatened by the election of Walter Stanford to office. Whatever his weaknesses, the mercer had tremendous acumen and a nose for any mismanagement. Under his surveillance, the corruption would not only have to cease but its extent during the previous mayoralty would have been uncovered. Ashway and Kenyon were left with only one option. Stanford had to be stopped.

  ‘And so they killed Michael,’ he said. ‘Because so much of me was invested in my nephew, they hoped that my grief would rob me of the urge to go on.’ He looked at Nicholas. ‘How was it done, Master Bracewell?’

  ‘The murder was committed in that house on the Bridge,’ said the other. ‘I was deceived for a while when I learnt that it was owned by Sir Lucas Pugsley. It was borrowed from him by Alderman Ashway for the purpose. Though the murder happened by daylight, the body was not disposed of until night. Under the cover of darkness, it was dropped out of the window but it struck the starling on its way to the water.’

  ‘The smashed leg!’ said Stanford.

  ‘Yes, sir. It must have been caught in the eddies then buoyed up by a piece of driftwood that carried it downstream. By complete chance, we encountered it.’

  ‘You and your waterman.’

  ‘Abel Strudwick. A sound man with all his faults.’

  ‘One question, sir. Why was my nephew’s face so mangled and bloody? We could scarce recognise him.’

  ‘That was the intention.’

  ‘What say you?’

  ‘It was not your nephew, sir.’

  ‘Not? But William and I saw him.’

  ‘You saw only what looked like him,’ explained the other. ‘Michael Delahaye is still alive.’

  ‘But that does not make sense.’

  When Nicholas enlarged on his claim, Walter Stanford was forced to accept that it was all too logical. The army surgeon had told the book holder everything. Michael Delahaye was not just another grumbling soldier, he was a complete dissolute who resented his uncle for cutting short his strenuous overindulgence. Joining the army in order to prolong his wasteful ways, the soldier had found it so intolerable and depressing that it had turned a merry gentleman into a malevolent one. Walter Stanford became the target for that malevolence. When Michael Delahaye was offered a chance to strike back at his uncle, he seized it because it gave him the opportunity to escape for ever from the oppression of respectability and start a new life of debauchery under a new name. It also gave him the supreme satisfaction of killing off the mortal enemy he had made in the army.

  Cold silence had fallen on Stanford as he listened. To lose a loving nephew was one form of misery. To learn that he was the object of that same person’s hate was far worse. The one saving grace was that the whole plot had been exposed by a man of such evident discretion.

  ‘What must I do, Master Bracewell?’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘But they will flee the approach of justice.’

  ‘Only if you frighten them away,’ said Nicholas. ‘We must tempt your nephew out of hiding or this will never be settled. Be ruled by me, sir. Prepare yourself for action but take none yet. Wait but a little while and they will surely strike again. Be patient.’

  Stanford thought it over and nodded his agreement. He was deeply disturbed by what he had heard and he needed time to assimilate it all. What really cut him to the quick was the news about Michael Delahaye and he did not try to shuffle off his responsibility in the matter. His intentions had been good but he had applied intense pressure to his nephew to get him to conform and to abandon his wilder ways. He had helped to turn an idle but relatively harmless young man into a monster and it preyed on him. Having been through one grim ordeal, he now faced an even more punitive one.

  ‘What am I to tell my sister?’ he asked.

  ‘What she needs to know.’

  ‘She believes her son was hauled out of the river.’

  ‘Then that is what happened, sir,’ said Nicholas levelly. ‘There is no need for her to learn the full truth. The son whom she loved and knew died in the Netherlands. Do not bring him back to torment her.’

  Once again, Stanford accepted sage advice and looked across at the other with increased respect. Nicholas clearly had to be given some freedom where the stage-management of everything was concerned. He would know how to flush the villains out of their holes.

  ‘When will they strike?’ said Stanford.

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘How soon?’

  ‘At the Lord Mayor’s Show.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Ridings were an integral part of life in the capital. The processions were not merely a source of entertainment and wonder for the commonalty but a means of impressing upon them the dignity and power of their rulers. In medieval times, the most splendid processions were those on royal occasions, especially a coronation or a wedding. By the later years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, however, the Lord Mayor’s Show had come to rival even these, taking the whole city as its stage and encompassing traditions that went back to the very origin of old London town. The Show had now completely taken over from the Midsummer Marching Watch as the main civic annual parade and nobody dared to miss it. Ridings meant public holidays when people could enjoy a dazzling spectacle then go off to celebrate what they had seen in general merry-making.

  Extra soldiers and constables were on duty as a result of the recent riot but nobody expected that there would be any real troubles. A Lord Mayor’s Show did not stir up apprentices to attack the immigrant craftsmen of Southwark. It was an attestation of civil power in a city that was nominally ruled by a sovereign, a shared belief that London was the most eminent place in Europe, a time when the whole populace was bathed in feelings of pride and identity and well-being. Walter Stanford was known to be exceptionally keen on civic tradition. The Show which carried him into office promised to be an outstanding one.

  Some wanted to make it more memorable still.

  ‘Everything turns on today,’ said Rowland Ashway.

  Aubrey Kenyon nodded. ‘We must not lose our nerves.’

  ‘Indeed, sir, or we are like to lose our heads.’

  ‘Hopefully, that might be Stanford’s fate.’

  ‘It has to be, Aubrey, or we are undone.’

  They were talking in Kenyon’s house before going out to take up their places in the procession. The aldermanic robes made Ashway look fatter and more florid than ever whereas the Chamberlain’s stateliness was enhanced by his regalia. They looked an ill-matched pair but they were yoked together in crime now and depended critically upon each other. There was someone else upon whom they relied.

  ‘Can he be trusted to do his office?’ said Kenyon.

  ‘Nobody is more eager to perform it.’

  ‘He let us down at Richmond.’

  ‘That was the fault of Firk,’ sneered Ashway. ‘He hanged the wrong man and fell foul of that book holder. Did he but know it, Master Bracewell did us a favour. He killed off Firk and saved us the trouble of doing it ourselves. Delahaye is another kind of man again.’

  ‘Renfrew,’ said the other. ‘He likes to be called James Renfrew. Lieutenant Delahaye is dead.’

  ‘So will this Captain James Renfrew be in time,’ said Ashway quietly. ‘When he has done what we have paid him for, we must finish him off as well. He knows too much, Aubrey. It is the only way.’

  ‘And today?’

  ‘We must put our faith in his madness.’

  ‘He hates Stanford even more than we do.’

  Ashway smirked. ‘I love him for that.’

/>   Since 1453, when Sir John Norman was rowed up the river in a fine barge with silver oars, the Lord Mayor’s Show had taken place on both land and water. Both banks of the Thames were thus lined with ranks of spectators who waited expectantly to see a floating marvel. Everyone knew the itinerary. Walter Stanford, Lord Mayor of London, would first tour his ward – that of Cornhill in which the Royal Exchange symbolically stood – then proceed to the nearest stairs where he would embark and be rowed up to Westminster to take his oath in the Exchequer before the judge. After that, he would return by barge to Blackfriars and progress to St Paul’s for a service of thanksgiving before going on to the Guildhall for his Banquet. Veteran onlookers knew how to move around the city to get several perspectives on the Show. Newcomers with staring country eyes stayed rooted to the same spot for hours in order to catch a mere glimpse of the pomp and circumstance that marked the occasion.

  Walter Stanford himself took it all with the utmost seriousness. Dressed in the traditional robes and wearing the famous mayoral hat, he was for that day alone the father of the whole city but it was his position as an uncle that worried him. Somewhere along the way was a crazed nephew with a grudge against him and a need to nip his mayoralty in the bud. Behind his smiles and his waves and his apparent delight, therefore, was an anxiety that would not leave him. His faith had been placed in a man who was nothing more than a book holder in a theatrical company. Was his trust well founded?