The Giant, O'Brien: A Novel

With a little light burning?”

“Not yet!” Jankin was anxious. “Before she can spot the light she must wander—many hours—and she is shivering and the cold is fierce, each branch of a tree growing into crystal, and she thinks she will not live till morning, for already the ice is crusting her pale hair.”

His head bowed, his voice low, the Giant prompted Jankin. “Think—is the cold her only enemy?”

“By no means—she thinks the wolves will devour her, or the bears.” He looked up at Slig. “Devour is what we say when we mean eat, it is a superior word, more terrifying.”

“You are eloquent, Jankin,” the Giant said.

“For this is a country where there are still bears.”

“I see,” Joe Vance said. “But presently, she comes to a little cottage, eh?”

“And knocks at the door,” Pybus said. “Timidly. The door is opened by a dwarf and behind him are his six brothers, who are all of them dwarves as well.”

“Is she a pretty girl?” Con asked idly.

“I don’t know. Is she?” Pybus looked at the Giant.

“Her eyes as blue as the cornflower,” the Giant said. He felt he was re-using his encomiums. “Her neck like a swan’s on a summer lake.”

“Very passable, then,” Claffey said. “Allowing for the dirty feet and the mud caked on her.”

Pybus touched the Giant’s arm. “Take up the tale, Mester.”

“You know it,” the Giant said. “Tell it yourself.” The fact was, it sickened him, the tale of the seven dwarves. He was always trying to think of a different ending to it, but the snag was that it ended in the truth.

“Pybus, you tell it,” Jankin pleaded.

Pybus raked his fingers through his hair, thinking. “So she comes in. She comes in and she sees it’s a snug little place, a fire blazing and an iron pot over it, and a rabbit cooking in that pot.”

“Rabbit!” Jankin was distraught. “It was a fat hen stewing, was what I heard. Charlie—”

“Whatever,” the Giant said shortly.

“Am I telling it?” Pybus demanded.

“You’re telling it,” Jankin said.

“The table is set ready with a basket of bread, the candles are burning, and through a parted curtain she can see another room, where there is a row of beds, dwarves’ beds, all heaped with animal skins. So the dwarves take her to the fire and she warms herself. She says, ‘My dear sir dwarves, will you let me stay the night, and give me a meal from your pot? For out there in the cold the wolves and bears will eat me.’ Sorry. Devour. So the dwarves look at each other, and the eldest of them—”

“This is the good bit.” Jankin hugged himself.

“—the eldest of them says, ‘There is nowhere to sleep but our seven beds, so choose one of us to be your companion.’”

“If I know women,” Joe said, “she won’t run out into the cold again. She won’t put herself to the inconvenience.”

“You call a bear an inconvenience?” the Giant asked.

“So she consented: saying, ‘Which of you is the eldest?’ The eldest brother spoke up. ‘I’ll share your bed,’ she said.”

“And will the other dwarves watch?” Constantine Claffey said. The Giant’s eyes were rivetted to the egg stain on his waistcoat; did he wear it as a badge of wealth, boasting to his neighbours in Clement’s Inn that he could afford to eat?

Joe Vance said, “What if she had a dwarf baby?”

Con said, “It’s a surprise she didn’t say, ‘Pull down your nethers and let’s have a swift take on your pricks.’ And make her choice so. Or were they dwarf as well?”

The Giant stood up. “A need for air,” he advised.

He trod heavily downstairs, pushed open the barrier between himself and the night. Bitch Mary was slumped against the wall, her face turned towards the east. A glint from a lamp cut a gilded slice from her cheek: a Saracen’s moon. “You’re waiting for a client?” he asked.

“Why not? What’s to lose now?”

“Claffey would have wed you. It was the sound of your debt put him off.”

“Oh, I’ve paid it,” she said. “By God, Charlie, every farthing.”

He climbed the stairs again. The room was clogged with smoke. The fire was almost out. Vance sent to the chandlers for their coal, Jankin carrying it by the half-peck. Sea-coal fire, they called it. It sighed before it crumbled, as if the cold sea’s voice were in it. The voice of the boy Pybus ran on, continuing the story. “And all that night, in the dwarf’s embraces.”

Hunter: that same moon, a dripping sabre-cut, slashing at a window of his town house: shutter closed against it, his feet crossed before a low-slumbering hearth.

They say Wullie’s worse. His practice has fallen off altogether. Well, let him. I am now the famous Hunter. What did he ever snare but smart society snatches? Whereas my collection is the envy of every contemporary practitioner of human knowledge.