The Nine Giants Read online

  ‘I never give less,’ said Gill sulkily.

  ‘As to our immediate future …’

  Firethorn outlined the programme that lay ahead, most of it confined to the Queen’s Head which was their home base. One new performing venue did, however, surface.

  ‘We have received an invitation to visit Richmond,’ said Firethorn. ‘The date lies some weeks hence but it is important to address our minds to it now.’

  ‘Where will we play?’ asked Hoode.

  ‘In the yard of an inn.’

  ‘Its name?’

  ‘The Nine Giants.’

  ‘I have never heard of the place,’ sneered Gill.

  ‘That is no bar to it,’ said Firethorn easily. ‘It is a sizeable establishment, by all accounts, and like to give us all that the Queen’s Head can offer. The Nine Giants are nine giant oak trees that grace its paddock.’

  Gill snorted. ‘You ask me to perform amid trees?’

  ‘Yes, Barnaby,’ said his tormentor. ‘You simply lift your back leg like any common cur and make water. Even you may win a laugh by that device.’

  ‘I am against the whole idea,’ said the other.

  ‘Your opposition is a waste of bad breath.’

  ‘The Nine Giants does not get my assent.’

  ‘Too late, sir. I have accepted the invitation on behalf of the company.’

  ‘You had no right to do that, Lawrence!’

  ‘Nor any chance to refuse,’ said Firethorn, producing the one reason that could silence Gill. ‘It was given by Lord Westfield himself. Our noble patron has commanded us to appear in Richmond.’

  ‘To what particular end?’ said Hoode.

  ‘As part of the wedding celebrations of a friend.’

  ‘And what will we play?’

  ‘That is what we must decide, Edmund. Lord Westfield has asked for a comedy that touches upon marriage.’

  ‘There is sense in that,’ agreed Gill, reviving at once and seeing a chance to steal some glory. ‘The ideal choice must be Cupid’s Folly.’

  ‘The piece grows stale, sir.’

  ‘How can you say that, Lawrence? My performance as Rigormortis is as fresh as a daisy.’

  ‘Daisies are low, dishonest flowers.’

  Barnaby Gill banged the table with irritation. His fondness for Cupid’s Folly was well founded. A rustic comedy with a farcical impetus, it was the one play in the company’s repertoire which gave him a central role that allowed him to dominate throughout. As a result, it was staged whenever they needed to mollify the little actor or to dissuade him for implementing his regular threat to walk out on Westfield’s Men. No such exigency obtained here.

  ‘I favour Marriage and Mischief,’ said Hoode.

  ‘Then you should have wed Margery,’ added Firethorn. ‘It is an interesting suggestion, Edmund, to be sure, but the play begins to show its age.’

  ‘I stand by Cupid’s Folly,’ said Gill.

  ‘And I by Marriage and Mischief,’ said Hoode.

  ‘That is why we need a happy compromise.’ Firethorn gave a ripe chuckle which showed that the decision had already been made. ‘We will favour the nuptials with some sage advice. Let us play The Wise Widow of Dunstable.’

  It was a compromise indeed and his fellow sharers came to see much virtue in it. Edmund Hoode, fearing that he might be commissioned to write a new play for the occasion, was ready to settle for a seasoned comedy by another hand, especially as it offered him a telling cameo as the ghost of the widow’s departed husband. Barnaby Gill, robbed of the opportunity to star in his favourite play, warmed quickly to the idea of a piece which gave him a prominent role and allowed him to execute no less than four of his famous comic jigs. Inevitably, it was Lawrence Firethorn who would shine in the leading part of Lord Merrymouth but there was light enough for others. The Wise Woman of Dunstable satisfied all needs.

  They discussed their plans in more detail then the meeting broke up. Barnaby Gill was first to leave. When Edmund Hoode tried to follow him out, he was detained by the actor-manager. The glowing countenance of Lawrence Firethorn said it all and the other braced himself.

  ‘I may have work for you, Edmund.’

  ‘Spare me, sir, I pray you.’

  ‘But I am in love, man.’

  ‘I have long admired your beautiful wife.’

  ‘It is not Margery I speak of!’ hissed Firethorn. ‘Another arrow has been fired into my heart.’

  ‘Pluck it out in the name of marital bliss.’

  ‘Come, come, Edmund. We are men of the world, I hope. Our passions are too fiery to be sated by a single woman. Each of us must spread his love joyously among the sex.’

  Hoode sighed. ‘Could I but find her, I would be faithful to one dear mistress.’

  ‘Then help me secure mine by way of rehearsal.’

  ‘I will not write verses for you, Lawrence.’

  ‘They would be for her, man. For a divinity.’

  ‘Offer up prayers instead.’

  ‘I come to you in the name of friendship, Edmund. Do not let me down in my hour of need. Stand by to help, that is all I ask. Nothing is required from you now.’

  ‘Why cannot you do your wooing alone?’

  ‘And throw away the best chance that I have? Your poems are love potions in themselves, Edmund. No woman can resist your honeyed phrases and your sweet sadness.’

  Hoode gave a hollow laugh. In recent months, several women had been proof against the most affecting verse that his pen could produce. It would be ironic if his poetic talent helped to ensnare a new victim for the capacious bed of Lawrence Firethorn.

  ‘Who is the doomed lady?’ he asked.

  ‘That is the beauty of it, man. Nick Bracewell found out her name for me and it has increased my raptures.’

  ‘How can this be?’

  Firethorn shook his head. ‘I may not tell you until after my prize is secured. But this I will say, Edmund. The lady in question is not only the most splendid creature in London. She will present me with the sternest challenge that I have ever faced. Your assistance will be the difference betwixt success and failure.’

  ‘Or betwixt failure and disaster.’

  ‘I like your spirit,’ said Firethorn, slapping his mournful companion between the shoulder blades. ‘We are yoke-fellows in this business. Mark my words, sir, we will bed this angel between us.’

  ‘Abandon this folly now, Lawrence.’

  ‘It is my mission in life.’

  ‘Draw back while you still have time.’

  ‘Too late, man. Plans have already been set in motion.’

  Nicholas Bracewell set out early next morning with his mind still racing. A night in the arms of Anne Hendrik had lifted his spirits but failed to obliterate his abiding anxieties. The first of these concerned the dead body which he had dragged out of the murky waters on the previous night. As he was rowed back across the Thames in the sunlight, he felt once more the touch of the dead man’s hand and saw again the mutilated corpse bobbing about before him. The body had been young, firm and well muscled, sent to its grave before its time with the most grotesque injuries. Nicholas was filled with horror and racked by a sense of waste. The life of some nameless man had been viciously cut short by unknown hands that had worked with malign purpose. Evidently, someone had hated the victim – but who had loved him? Who had borne him and cared for him? What family depended on him? What friends would mourn his absence? Why had he been hacked so cruelly out of existence and sent anonymously to meet his Maker? Over and over again, Nicholas asked himself the question that contained all the others – who was he?

  One mystery led him on to another. What had really happened to Hans Kippel? He had been given a very incomplete account by Anne Hendrik because she herself did not know the full facts. Something very unpleasant had befallen the apprentice and Nicholas resolved to find out what it was as soon as he was able. He had always liked the boy – despite his lapses – and taken an almost fatherly interest in him. Again, he was
upset by Anne’s patent agitation and wanted to do all he could to help. It was as important to find Hans Kippel’s assailant as it was to identify the body from the Thames.

  The boat reached the wharf and he paid the waterman before stepping ashore and making his way towards Gracechurch Street. With his feet on dry land again and his place of work in prospect, he turned to another grim subject. A violent death and a hounded youth had occupied his thoughts this far and those same images still lurked as he considered the walking misery that was Alexander Marwood. The threat of expulsion was indeed real. It was the reputation of Westfield’s Men which could meet a violent death if the company was deprived of its home. Sharers and hired men alike would become hounded youths who were driven way from the Queen’s Head. Nicholas took a realistic view of possible consequences and shuddered.

  Without their base, the company would find it very difficult to survive, certainly in its present form. It might limp along in some attenuated shape for a short while by appearing intermittently at a variety of venues but this could only ever be a temporary expedient. Other companies would move in quickly to pick the bones clean. Outstanding talents such as Lawrence Firethorn, Barnaby Gill and Edmund Hoode would soon be employed elsewhere but lesser mortals would stay out in the cold. Nicholas was confident that he himself would find work somewhere in the theatre but his concern was for his fellows, for the hired men who made up the bulk of the company and who clung to it with the desperate loyalty of those who have tasted the bitterness of neglect. To be thrust once more into unemployment would be a fatal blow to some of them and they might never work again.

  Nicholas caught sight of the inn sign outside the Queen’s Head and he sighed. Elizabeth Tudor looked as regal and defiant as ever but she might harbour tragedy for some of her subjects. Those least able to defend themselves would be cast adrift in a hostile city. The book holder thought of Thomas Skillen, the old stagekeeper, of Hugh Wegges, the tiremen, of Peter Digby and his consort of musicians. He thought of all the other poor souls to whom Westfield’s Men gave a shred of dignity and a semblance of security. One in particular haunted Nicholas.

  It was George Dart.

  Being a member of a celebrated theatre company was not an unqualified honour. George Dart found that he had to earn his keep and suffer for his art. Even on days when there was no performance, the hard work did not cease and his status as the youngest and smallest of the stagekeepers meant that all the most menial and demanding tasks were assigned to him. It was manifestly unjust and, though that injustice was often reduced by the kindly intercession of Nicholas Bracewell, it could still rankle. George Dart was the company workhorse, the shambling beast of burden onto whom anything and everything could be loaded by uncaring colleagues. In rare moments of introspection, when he could pause to review his lot, he generated such a lather of self-pity that he toyed with the idea of leaving the theatre altogether, a bold move that always evaporated before his eyes when he considered how impossible it would be for him to find employment elsewhere. With all its disadvantages and its insecurities, working with Westfield’s Men was the only life he had ever known.

  Morning found him attending to one of the jobs that he liked least. He had been sent out early to put up the playbills advertising the performance of Double Deceit at the Theatre on the morrow. His first problem was to get the playbills from the printer without having the money to pay for them, assuring the man that Firethorn himself would be around to settle the debt that very day, hoping that the trusting soul was not aware of all the other printers still awaiting payment by Westfield’s Men. This time he was lucky and got off lightly with a clip across the ear and a few blood-curdling oaths. Dart left the premises in Paternoster Lane with the playbills under his arm and began the familiar round.

  The perils that befall the puny awaited him at every turn. He was jostled by elbows, pushed by hands, tripped by feet, abused by tongues and even chased by a gang of urchins but he continued steadfastly on his way and put up the playbills on every post and fence along the route. The reputation of Westfield’s Men went before them and they had built up an appreciable following in a city that was clamouring for lively theatre but that same following needed to be informed of dates and times and places. Though he was involved in unrelieved drudgery, George Dart told himself that he was a vital link between the company and its prospective audience and thereby sought to check his rising sensation of worthlessness.

  When the dispiriting work was over, there was one last chore for him. At the command of Lawrence Firethorn himself, he was to deliver the remaining playbill at a house in Bishopsgate. Since it was a continuation of Gracechurch Street, he knew it well but the market was its usual seething mass of humanity and he had to struggle with all his depleted might to make headway. Stanford Place eventually came into sight and he was daunted. Its monstrous size was forbidding and he could hear the barking of dogs from within as he hovered at the threshold. He stepped back involuntarily and was about to turn tail when he remembered the order that had been given to him by Firethorn. Facing his master with the news that he had disobeyed would be worse than hurling his frail body into the midst of a pack of ravening mastiffs. He opted for the lesser punishment and reached out to pull the bell at Stanford Place.

  Response was immediate. The barking increased in volume and clawed feet could be heard scrabbling at the other side of the door. When it was opened with a dignified sweep, three dogs let him know that they did not welcome his arrival. They were silenced by a curt command from the slim and supercilious man who was now gazing down his nose at the unsolicited caller. Years as the household steward had given Simon Pendleton an ability to sum up stray visitors in an instant. He felt able to use a tone of complete contempt for the crumpled George Dart.

  ‘Depart from this place at once, boy.’

  ‘But I have business here, sir,’ pleaded the other.

  ‘None that need be taken seriously.’

  ‘Do but hear me, master.’

  ‘Away with you and your confounded begging bowl!’

  ‘I ask for nothing,’ said Dart hurriedly. ‘Except that this be delivered to the mistress of the house.’

  Pendleton was taken aback as the handbill was passed over to him. Rolled up into a scroll, it was tied with a piece of pink ribbon to give it a hint of importance. Even though it was covered by the sweaty fingerprints of its bearer, it enforced more serious consideration.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Pendleton.

  ‘A mere messenger, sir.’

  ‘From whom, boy?’

  ‘The lady will understand.’

  ‘I desire further information.’

  ‘My duty has been done,’ said Dart gratefully.

  And before the dogs could even begin to growl, he swung around and scurried off into the crowd with a speed born of desperation. A typical morning had ended.

  Marriage to a much older man was turning out to have many unforeseen advantages and Matilda Stanford enjoyed the process of discovering what they were. When a young woman consents to wed a partner of more mature years, it is usually more of an arranged match than a case of irresistible love and so it was with her. Doting parents had been delighted when so august a figure as the Master of the Mercers’ Company took an interest in their daughter and they encouraged that interest as wholeheartedly as they could. While the father worked sedulously on the potential suitor, the mother began to frame the girl’s mind to the concept of marriage as social advance and she had slowly broken down all of Matilda’s reservations. Now that she had been a wife for five months, the new mistress of Stanford Place was revelling in her good fortune.

  Her husband was kind, attentive and ready to please her with touching eagerness. At the same time, Walter Stanford was a wealthy merchant whose continued success depended on the unremitting work he put into his business affairs. His preoccupation with those – and with the many duties of being Lord Mayor Elect – meant that his wife was given ample free time to spread her wings and to lear
n the power of his purse. Nor was Matilda put under any undue pressure in the marriage bed. He was a patient and considerate man, never enforcing any conjugal rights that she did not willingly concede and treating her with unflagging respect. There was another element in the relationship. Though devoted to his new wife, Walter Stanford was still, to some degree, in mourning for her predecessor, his first wife, Alice, mother of his two children, a charming woman who had been killed before her time in a tragic accident some eighteen months earlier.

  What pleased Matilda was the fact that she was not expected to be a complete replacement for someone who had shared her husband’s life and bed for well over twenty years. Alice Stanford lay in the past. Matilda was the present and future, a rich prize owing to a rich man, an envied catch, a superb item to display in a household that prided itself above all else on the quality of its decoration. She had no illusions about it. Walter Stanford had married her to fill a gap in nature. She was there primarily to be seen as a wife rather than to satisfy his lust or provide him with heirs. It was a situation she came to appreciate.

  Romance was signally lacking but there had been none of that in her parents’ marriage and that was the model on which she based her judgements. Walter Stanford might not be able to stir her emotions but he could impress her with his wealth, please her with his gallantry and amuse her with the way that he showered gifts upon her. Matilda was indeed unawakened but only because she slept so soundly in such a comfortable existence.

  ‘Where shall we go next?’

  ‘I have not recovered from yesterday’s outing yet.’

  ‘London has much more to offer,’ he said. ‘It is the most exciting city in Europe.’

  ‘I am learning that to be true.’

  ‘Let us sail up the river to Hampton Court.’

  ‘Hold on, sir. Do not hurry me so.’