Joe did not know whether the question expected the answer yes or the answer no.
He scowled at Claffey. “You get above your station, rag-arse.”
“I’ll be taking my sack with me,” the Giant said. His tone was serene. “That way, there can be no doubt whether anything has gone out of it, and there need be no harsh opinions. Tonight we look east, my brave fellows. I swear we will see a glint of Mary before the sun rises.”
For he looked to find her, this misty night, seated by the grey smudge of the river, her hair streaming like a comet, and the sky’s last deep blue pooling in her eyes; to find her in the nasty sites of Old Street by calling her name, or to hear her laugh in Clerkenwell. Oh Mary, darling of our hearts, have you set your foot on Pickle-Herring Stairs? Are you hawking tripe or picking rags, are you scouring ale-pots in Limehouse or sifting ash on the city’s fringe?
He left Jankin sitting on a wall somewhere, complaining of his feet, and lost Claffey to a game of dice and Pybus to a game of skittles. He stopped in a room of greased beams and smoky tallow, where he ate hot water gruel with some bread crumbled in it and garnished with pepper; he asked for a pat of butter, and the landlady said, what do you think this is, Holland House? He saw some bandits eyeing up his money bag, and stood to his full height, at which they left the room, muttering.
Later they were waiting for him, in strength, but he casually placed an elbow in the eye socket of one, tripped another bloodynose squash on the cobbles, and nudged a third into the wall head first. Then he picked up their leader—he was tired, and wanted an end of it—and tossed him into a midden.
It came on to rain. Ambling home down the Strand, towards midnight, he glanced into a back court, and under a dripping gable he saw a woman he recognised, but it was not Bitch Mary. He had seen her last in Ireland, stepping between the puddles, her child riding high in her belly. He could not be mistaken in those lakes that were her eyes, or the white arms which her rags exposed. So she left the grave after all, he thought, the grave of her hero son. I asked her to share my throne.
He would not shame her by speaking; she was selling herself, it was clear, to Englishmen. He took a coin from his bag, and, as he passed her, let it drop into the filth at her feet. “Here.” Her voice rang out, hard and empty. “Fucking freak throws his lucre at me.” He turned back. Noted her tone: whore bred in Hoxton. He saw that her face was not the same at all.
Back at the Hampshire Hod, he troubled the landlord for spirits, and climbed the stairs.
“Did you get her then?” Joe asked. He was hunched in the corner with his prince book and a candle.
The Giant didn’t answer. “I want to move from here,” he said. “Insufficiently commodious.”
“Listen Charlie, I’ve been thinking.”
“Have you so, Joe Vance? Is that the wailing and grunting that carries from here to Ludgate?”
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you,” said Joe, looking up. “Broken pates is more your line. What say we pitch you in a prize-fight with that small giant who’s showing at the Haymarket?”
“No.” The Giant sat down. “It is a man on stilts, and besides, I don’t feel well. I don’t feel right in myself, and I want to move house.”
“The porterage fees are mounting up. What with your whims and fancies.”
“It wasn’t my fancy to come here. Anyway … you’d been thinking, you said.”
“Thinking about that volume of money you’re toting around. Would you let me transmit it back home for you?”
“Back to where?”
“O’Connor’s cabin would be safe enough. The man who comes raiding is only looking for his rightful cows; he wouldn’t be so brutal as to loom in and steal from Connor’s chest.”
“It’s my Mulroney’s money, you understand?” The Giant brooded. “Thank you for your offer, Vance. But I think I’ll keep it where I can see it, for now.”
Every night they lay at Piccadilly, the Giant dreamed of the Edible House. The travellers who arrive at the house begin by eating it, but it ends by eating them.
On quarter day they moved to rooms in Cockspur Street. Their new landlord—not so new, because it was Kane—checked them in, and ran through the inventory with Joe.
“Lucky we’ve brought our own fire-irons,” the Giant said. “That black and evil-looking set of tongs is the devil’s own implement, and the poker inspires me with disgust.”
“One pot for boiling,” said the landlord.
“One pot for boiling,” Joe said. “Do we pay extra for the hole in it?”
“One cup for keeping salt. One iron candlestick—”
“Dented,” said Joe.
“Dented, but functional. One bolster, any objection to the bolster? Anything to say about it? Fine. Two chairs with straw seats, one painted chair with a dint in the back, one three-legged stool. And you’ll please not say that it wobbles for that’s just what a three-legged stool don’t do. Three tin pint pots. One jar for vinegar. A pair of green woollen curtains with barely noticeable moth holes. And a deal table.”
“It’s a table fit for vagrants,” Claffey said. “Jesus, Kane, there’s not a single piece in this establishment that a pawnbroker would look at.”
“That’s the idea,” said Kane.
It was Claffey who followed him to the door. “Have you any idea of the whereabouts of the girl Mary?”
“No, but if I had I’d peel the hide off her.”
“Because our idiot, Jankin, he is off his fodder, and none of us is too happy till we know she’s not drowned or lost. Would you know the whereabouts of Bride Caskey?”
