“Yes, that too.” Howison cleared his throat. “They want a hundred guineas.”
John hurtled forward, into space. He knocked his head hard on the corner of his dissecting bench.
He knelt on the boards, bleeding and swearing.
Meanwhile the Giant watched the Human Pincushion at work, seated on the three-legged stool, casually popping the pins in her mouth and swallowing. “Done it all me life,” she explained, between bites. “Can’t flourish at all without I have a nice pin in me mouth—or a needle’s a treat. I like a nice darning needle when I can get one.”
“Do they ever come out?” Pybus said, gaping.
“Oh yes. No show without they come out. First you see a black spot, like, on me arm or me leg, and then it festers a bit, then after a while you can see the head of the pin and so draw it out. A doctor comes and sees me, he asks to examine me, he says, Mrs. Cricklewell, you’re going to lose the use of your legs, and I says to him, Doctor, you just keep the pins coming and never mind legs, a woman has to earn a crust, and I says to him, What about my insomnia? Cure that, can you? Thing is, I have to be up in the night, scraping about for another mouthful.”
“I have an iron-eater,” Kane said, boasting. “Spectators are requested to bring items they want eaten, like a horseshoe, or a bunch of keys they don’t need anymore.”
“Ferris has a green man,” Slig said. “He’s showing him at Russell Street.”
“How the hell would Ferris know if he’s green? Ferris is blind.”
“Ferris has vowed bloody revenge on the killers of Bride Caskey.”
Claffey spat. “Let him come round here, and bring his verdant freak. He’ll be green himself when I’ve kicked him in the groin.”
“In the reign of Conaire,” said the Giant, “there was no dissension in the land. Every man thought his neighbour’s voice as sweet as a harp-string. In those summers, the sun shone unclouded from spring till October. Acorns were so abundant that men waded in them up to their knees. No wolf stole more than one bull-calf from any herd.”
“So what went wrong?” Con Claffey said, yawning hugely.
“It was a matter of Conaire’s foster brothers, apparently. Who were very fond of thieving and plundering.”
“They could not be denied,” said Pybus: not without admiration in his tone.
“At Da Dergha’s Hostel,” the Giant said, “when he and his followers were sitting down to feast, a woman came to them, a giant woman wearing a fleecy striped mantle. She had a beard that reached down to her knees, and her mouth was on one side of her head. She stood leaning on the doorpost, casting her eyes on the king and all the youths around him. ‘What do you see?’ the king asked her. She said”—and here the Giant paused, and seemed to choke on his words. “She said her name was Cailb.
“‘That is a short name,’ said the king.
“She said, ‘I have others. They are Samuin. Sinand. Seschend. Saiglend. Samlocht.’”
“Less names,” said Claffey. “And get on with it.”
The Giant glared. “Very well, Francis Claffey—if you don’t know what to call your fate when she comes for you, don’t come crying to me. There are at least twenty-six names I have not told you, so consider them all listed, and bear in mind that all these names she recited in one breath, and while standing on one leg.”
“Why did she do that?” Pybus asked.
“Why does anybody do anything? So Conaire asked her, ‘What do you want,’ and she said, ‘To come in.’ Conaire said, ‘There is a solemn prohibition placed on me against admitting any single woman after sunset.’”
“You mean no one had wed her?” Kane said. “And with a beard like that?”
“Solemn prohibition?” Con Claffey said. “The lad was making an excuse.”
“He was not,” said Jankin. “There was a solemn prohibition, and you would know about it if you had ever listened to this tale with attention. He can’t catch birds either, bad luck to him if he does.”
“So the woman said to him, ‘I claim hospitality from this house.’”
The Giant thought, I let Hunter in. I wined the man.
“So Conaire said, ‘If I send you an ox or a salted pig, would you not go elsewhere?’
“Then the woman got angry, and she said, ‘A pretty pass for this nation, if the High King can’t offer a bed and a dinner to one lone woman.’”
“I quite agree,” said Mrs. Cricklewell.
“So Conaire said, ‘Let her in.’ And all the company was stricken with a great terror, though none of them knew why.”
“I know why,” said Jankin. “Wouldn’t anybody be terrified if there came in this great woman with a beard and her mouth on one side?”
Pybus said, “I wouldn’t be frightened of a woman. Though I’d be frightened of that man who came in the ship, yesterday. The man with one great eye, and seven pupils in it, and all as black as beetles.”
“Yes,” said the Giant, “you were not here for that part of the tale, Con Claffey.”
Con Claffey curled his lip.
“And I worry about those men with three heads,” Pybus said. “And each head, three rows of teeth from ear to ear. And bones without joints.”
“Are they for purchase?” said Slig.
Kane gnawed his lip. “There were fearful prodigies, in those days.”
