He is bolted in alone, in his cabinet at Jermyn Street. Anne is below, occupied with strumming and verse. Sound carries faintly, floor to floor; laughter that he does not understand. He pours a dram, though spirits are not his vice, the example of whoopsy-go Buchanan being ever before him. A half-glass inside him, he begins to pick a quarrel with someone who is not there: Wullie, perhaps.
There are some stupid men who believe fish to be deaf. If you have ever taken the trouble to discharge a pistol near a fishpond, you will find the truth is otherwise.
“In the morning, early,” said Pybus, “a woman of the next village came by, to sell eggs to the dwarves: for they had no fowl of their own. While she was lifting the cloth of her basket, her eyes were travelling about the house, looking to see how the dwarves lived, so she could carry tales to her neighbours. She peeped through the curtain, and then she saw the girl, rising naked from her bed. At once she—”
“Called her a dirty whore,” said Claffey.
“At once she cried out, ‘You catering slut—to sell them eggs is one matter, but to sleep with them in their beds’—and when the woman slapped her, the girl cried out, ‘I was here, only here, to save my life.’
“After the egg-seller had gone, the cottage would be silent. Sometimes she would shake herself, the girl, as if waking from a long sleep, and move half-hearted to the door. But the eldest dwarf would put out his paw to restrain her, with a word and a look of love, whilst his brothers, their cheerful habit subdued, swept out the house and made the neat beds and peeled vegetables for their dinner. So the light began to fade—for it is autumn, and in the forest—and she said, ‘It is too late for me to leave now’—and she felt that she might spend a year or two, winter and spring, in the forest amongst the dwarves.
“But when night fell, they saw the light of torches dance between the trees. They heard the murmur of voices. When they opened the door to a knock, it was the egg-seller that stood there. Behind her were the men of the village, armed with clubs. They dragged out the dwarves into their vegetable garden, and beat them to death, one by one, each dwarf watching the pulping of his brother, and the youngest came last. Then they dug up their vegetables and took them away, to cook in their iron pots. Meanwhile the girl hid in the press, among the clean linen, but then she smelled smoke, and this brought her out; she pitched out of the door, jeered at by the men and women, and punched in the face by the egg-seller, as the flames licked the thatch. They spat at her and shook their clubs, and thrust the burning brands into her face, so that she ran into the forest, screaming, barefoot and without her cloak, until she was lost among the trees, and the night’s blackness ate her up.”
ten
“Now then, O’Brien,” said Joe Vance. “You’ll have to get another trade. It’s not enough to be tall.”
The Giant stretched his hands out before him. They were trembling slightly. He knew his elongation not good news, but he wanted Vance to admire him. “But see, Joe. You’ve remarked yourself how I extend. Paddy, I’ll bet you, cannot top me. Nor will for many a year yet.”
“That’s all very well, growing and growing. But the public’s fickle, and in my opinion it’s had its fill.” He mimicked the mincing tone of an English-speaking gentleman. “Ooh, giants—giants were last year.”
“You mentioned a provincial tour, did you not?”
“Sure, but look at yourself, will you? Huddling by the fire, your nails not trimmed, your coat not brushed, your hair greased on your head like you’d rubbed it with a rasher—are you a sight to inspire Ipswich? Will they batter the doors down in Bath? Will the burghers of Bristol turn out with a pipe band?”
“It was only a thought,” the Giant said, sulking.
“The expense of being on the road, Charlie—I’d have to know it was going to be worth the while. No, what I was thinking … have you considered fire-eating? Fire-eating’s a fine profession.”
The Giant gaped at him. “And why must only I have a profession? Why cannot Claffey?”
“Surely,” Joe said, “you would not want the attention taken off yourself? As I understand it, any man with a steady hand and his wits about him can be a fire-eater, but why should Claffey have the glory? Ask yourself.”
“I wouldn’t mind a profession,” Pybus said. “Highwayman would suit me. If I had a horse.”
“You could be a footpad,” Jankin advised.
“Get out of it,” said Joe. “Earn a living by any other means. Or they’ll tie your gullet, and you’ll morrice on air. Remember the litany of the blind man Ferris?”
The Giant had fallen silent. “I have plenty of money,” he said at last. “I have no need to continue here, I am not bound in articles to you or any man. I could return to Ireland as soon as passage can be booked. I could take my sack on my back, and turn up in person on the holy site where Mulroney’s once stood.”
“I’ll tell you your trouble,” Joe Vance said. “You drink too much.”
Early in November, his followers had been out on the streets throwing squibs and crackers; it was an English custom. “I’ve never been warm since,” Claffey said. There had been fighting afterwards. This was five days after the gentry of Ireland had flitted to their wintering grounds, moving silently, gliding white in the dusk. It is unwise to obstruct them, to walk on their paths, or look at them directly. Their existence depends on tricks of the light, and shadows moving through water; their natural state is shadow. They don’t count, don’t know the days of the week, and use only wooden implements, distrusting iron and steel. They have children by the basketful, and carry them on their backs. All these gentlefolk are very old.
Constantine Claffey came around from Clement’s Inn—the egg-stain still on his waistcoat—to tell them a piece of news. It seemed that Goss’s pig had become such a huge attraction to the public of Dublin that some cockalorum magistrate rattled in to break up the show, believing it to be an assemblage for the singing of glory-o songs and fomentation of plots against rich men’s hayricks. His sergeants had slapped old Goss around the head and threatened Toby with hanging up and salting. Gathering his belongings and his store of money, Mr. Goss had fled for Chester, but hardly had he disembarked when he was seized by brain fever and expired.
“The murdering bully-boys,” Pybus exclaimed. “Them blows to the skull of old Goss was no doubt the direct result of his brain fever.”
“The cause,” the Giant murmured. “Not the result. And Pybus,
“I think you are all missing the point,” Vance said testily. “The point is, what has happened to Toby?”
Con, with a heave of the chest: “This melancholy tale I shall relate. Toby mourned for two days by his master’s grave, off his swill and giving tongue to porcine bleats. On the morning of the third day, when the nephew of Goss,
