that resides in Chester, came to tempt the pig into better spirits—why, he found him gone.”
“Found him gone,” said Charlie. “Now there’s another phrase to ponder.”
“Will you snick your teeth on your pedantry?” Vance demanded. “And you, Con Claffey—less of your bloody bombast. Where is Toby now?”
Con spread out his fingers. “That is what no man knows.”
“Then put a description out,” said Vance. “And with it, the word that I, Joe Vance, will pay a—what’s the phrase, Charlie?”
“Ah,” said Con Claffey. “What a word to roll upon the tongue!”
“Will pay a munificent reward for said pig or information leading to said pig.”
“This mu-un-niff-ee-sensse,” said Con. “Will it be all your own work?”
Vance shrugged. “I am but a shilling-in-the-guinea man, as you know. But I am hoping O’Brien will seize this investment opportunity.”
The Giant made his decision. “If I am not enterprising, I am nothing. Shake hands on it, Joe Vance. I will invest in the pig.”
That night, by way of celebration, they had a few drinks, and the Giant told the tale of Tannikin Skinker.
“She was born in a town on the river Rhine, neither a free Hollander nor a subject of the emperor. Her mother, before Tannikin’s birth, was asked for alms by an old beggar woman, but she chased her off. As she scuttled, the crone was heard to mutter, ‘Hog by disposition thou art, and thy child shall have hog written on her face.’
“Mistress Tannikin, when her mother bore her, was a very proper baby, except for her snout and bristles. Her family, who were of a wealthy sort, kept her hidden in their dark and panelled rooms, behind the casement …
“Panelled rooms, in their tall house: where doors opened to reveal doors opening, where shadows painted themselves in the corners, and the dark oils, framed in the low gleam of scarred gilt, pictured doors opening on doors, and women reading secret letters behind looped curtains.”
The Giant paused: he saw Tannikin, a big-boned, likely lass of fifteen or sixteen, her snout pressed to a windowpane, the shutter clipped back one fold; beneath her, far below, the little golden ships passing silently down the Rhine.
“Her mother and father tutored her well, and she became proficient in crewel-work, rhetoric and grammar, the use of the astrolabe and terrestrial globes, together with the transcription of music onto the staff; she also possessed a theoretical knowledge of baking, brewing, and the art of beekeeping. Though she had comprehension of seven languages, her voice was a grunt, and she wore always over her face a veil of black velvet.”
Again, the Giant paused. In describing Tannikin he had, he realised, gone far beyond the details given by the pamphleteer who had written her life-story. Honesty drew him back to the brutal facts.
“The old woman was at length discovered and taken up by the magistrate of those parts, but was unable or unwilling to lift the curse she had placed on the family. One fact she did divulge, before they touched the torch to the stake—if Tannikin Skinker obtained a husband, one who would love her in spite of her deformity, then she might be restored to the delights of a human countenance, her snout retracting and her bristles falling away as she first experienced the rite of love.”
“A pig-face?” Joe Vance said. “Very piggy?”
“Essence of hog.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Vance muttered. It was as if his manhood were challenged. “Was she rich, there’s the point of it. Had she a settlement?”
“Her dowry”—and again the Giant saw the gilded ships, freighted with woolsacks and Flanders hops, with silver looking-glasses, oranges from Sicily, and the fruit of Franconian vines. “Her dowry was … munificent. It was … ample.”
“Then put a bag on her head,” Claffey said, “and I’ll do the business. Is she still on the market?”
“Mistress Tannikin,” the Giant said, “was born in the Year of Grace 1618.”
“So?” Claffey said. The almanac was no part of his education.
The Giant continued on. “When this was noised abroad—and there were, as you may imagine, many curious and talkative spectators at the trial of the old witch—the town and even the house of the Skinker family were discovered to the public, and a parade of valiant but impecunious gentlemen besieged the door. They bore hand- coloured illustrations, on vellum, of their armigerous bearings, and in lieu of these, written references from magistrates, ministers of religion, and some in triplicate from the Holy Ghost himself.
“The Skinker family employed the town’s best dressmaker and its most applauded coiffeur. They had their dear daughter Tannikin padded with horsehair hips and entrammelled in hooped petticoats, and her sweating pink limbs encased in the finest brocade and sateen; and they persuaded the bespoke hairdresser to pin up and powder her coarse hair according to the best fashion of the time, and then they called for the milliner to deck her with a bonnet that was so beribboned, so decked with fruit and flowers, so embroidered over with every manner of child and beast, that men called it the Wonder of the West.”
He paused again. Gone too far with the bonnet, but what did they know of female modes? Gone too far with the Holy Ghost and the suitors, but what did they know of theology, or romance? He pictured Tannikin Skinker, while they tweaked and pinned and powdered her, with her trotter shielding her eyes, afraid to peep: longing again for the comforting dusk of her black velvet mask.
“And yet it was to no avail, any of it. Englishmen came, Frenchmen and Italians, Chinamen and Tartars, yet at the sight of the pig-face of Tannikin, all quailed: all made their excuses: all doffed their bonnets, and sadly took their leaves.”
“I’d not have been so precious,” Claffey said.
“But Tartars—” said Joe Vance.
