Edward Marston - The Nine Giants

‘By giving away all that you hold most dear?’

‘Only at a price.’

Nicholas shrugged. ‘That is your privilege, sir. But I wonder that you have not looked more fully into this.’

‘More fully?’

‘Alderman Ashway is an ambitious man. The Queen’s Head will not be the only inn he has gobbled up. Look to the Antelope and to the White Hart in Cheapside.’

‘What of them?’

‘Talk to the landlords,’ said the other. ‘See if they are happy that they sold out to the good brewer. You will find them weighed down with regret, I think.’

‘That is their fault,’ insisted Marwood. ‘I have wrested better terms for myself. You cannot frighten me in that way, Master Bracewell. The Antelope is a scurvy hostelry and the White Hart draws in low company. I’ll not compare the Queen’s Head with them.’

‘They all serve Ashway’s Beer.’

‘You have drunk your share without complaint.’

Nicholas was making no headway. Foreseeing the attack, Marwood had shored up his defences with care. The twitch might travel to and fro across his battlements but his wall would not be breached. Another form of entry had to be found. The book holder searched with care.

‘How does your wife face the impending loss?’

‘That is a private matter, sir.’

‘Mistress Marwood has her doubts, then?’

‘She will see sense in time.’

‘Would you sign a contract without her approval?’

The landlord fell into a stony silence but his twitch betrayed him completely. It broke out in four different areas simultaneously so that a swarm of butterflies seemed to have settled on his face. As he watched the fibrillating flesh, Nicholas Bracewell saw that there might be a shaft of hope for them after all. The future of Westfield’s Men rested on a woman.

Matilda Stanford was in reflective mood as she strolled along the winding paths in the garden. Early autumn was offering floral abundance and bending fruit trees, all wrapped in a heady mixture of sweet fragrances and brought alive by bright sunshine and birdsong. Stanford Place was blessed with one of the largest and most luxuriant gardens in the area, and its blend of privacy and tranquillity was exactly what she needed at that moment. The front of the house looked out on the daily turbulence of Bishopsgate Street but its rear gazed down upon an altogether different world. In the heart of the busiest city in Europe was this haven of pure peace. Matilda had loved it from the start but she came to appreciate it far more now. What had once been a pure delight was today a means of escape. In the twisting walks of the garden, she could find true solitude to relieve the sharpness of her melancholy.

Ever since she had realised she was unhappy, it had been more and more of an effort to pretend otherwise and she was almost glad of the crisis about her husband’s missing nephew, Michael, because it relieved her of the need to be so wifely and vivacious. In sharing the general concern, she could conceal her own feelings of loss and disappointment. In worrying about Lieutenant Michael Delahaye, she was expressing a deeper anxiety about someone else who had gone astray. Matilda Stanford was also missing and the search for her was fruitless.

There were moments of joy but they lay in the fond contemplation of one who was for ever beyond her reach. Lawrence Firethorn was unattainable. Though he had sent her a playbill and signalled his admiration during the performance of Double Deceit, that was as far as the relationship could realistically go. She was a married woman with no freedom of movement and he was a roving actor. There was no way that she could return the interest he had shown in her even though the desire to do so grew stronger by the hour. Michael’s disappearance was a mortal blow to her fleeting hopes. A man who might have accompanied her to the Queen’s Head was making sure that she had no means of going there. It was William Stanford who was leading the hunt and thereby depriving his stepmother of her means of attending a play.

As she looked ahead, her spirits sank even more. Her husband was a wonderful man in so many ways but he did not give her anything of the stimulation she received from a ranting actor upon a makeshift stage. When Walter Stanford became Lord Mayor of London, her situation could only get far worse as she was dragged along behind him into an endless round of social events. She would see even less of him and experience more inner torment. A marriage which had brought her such pleasure was now turning into a comfortable ordeal. She was stifled.

The lifeline was brought by Simon Pendleton.

‘Hold there, mistress.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Another missive has arrived for you.’

‘Who delivered it?’

‘That same miserable creature as before,’ said the steward, wrinkling his nose with polite contempt. ‘I have brought it to your hand.’

‘Thank you, Simon.’

‘Will there be anything else, mistress?’

‘Not at this time.’

He bowed and glided off into the undergrowth with practised ease. Though Matilda could not bring herself to like the man, she was profoundly grateful to him at the moment because he had fetched the thing she most desired. It was a playbill, rolled up as before and tied with a pink ribbon. As her nervous fingers released it, the scroll unwound and a sealed letter dropped to the ground. Matilda snatched it up immediately. A glance at the playbill told her that Westfield’s Men were due to stage Love and Fortune at the Queen’s Head on the following day but it was the letter that produced the real elation.

As she tore it open, she found herself reading a sonnet in praise of her beauty that itemised her charms with such playful delicacy that she almost swooned. It was unsigned but the sender — presumably the poet — was no less a person than Lawrence Firethorn himself. All her doubts were cast aside. Hers was no wild infatuation for a man beyond her grasp. It was a shared passion that drew them ineluctably together. A second message lay in the choice of play. Love and Fortune could be no accidental selection. It reinforced the sentiments of the sonnet and was an invitation to romance.

She read the poem again, weighing each word on the scales of her mind to extract maximum pleasure from it. That she could have inspired such a mellifluous flight of language was dizzying enough on its own. For it to have come from the hand of the man on whom she doted made the whole thing quite intoxicating. Walter Stanford could not be faulted as a loyal husband who treated his wife with respect. But he had no pretty rhymes in his soul.

Tears of joy formed. During her dark night of disenchantment, she had come to see that she was not happy in her marriage. During her walk in the afternoon sun, she made a discovery of equal import and adjusted her own view of herself yet again. In a garden in London, standing beneath a juniper tree, seeing the colour clearly, inhaling the sweet odours, hearing the melodious birdsong, Matilda Stanford had another revelation. Her heart was no longer bound by the vows made on her wedding day because it had not truly been engaged in the ceremony. Fourteen lines of poetry and a cheap playbill taught her something that sent a thrill through her entire being.

She was in love for the first time in her life.

The charnel house had a new keeper. Nicholas Bracewell’s formal complaint to the Coroner’s Court had led to the dismissal of the man who treated the dead bodies in his charge with such grotesque lack of respect. His hollow-cheeked successor was no more companionable but he had a greater sense of decency and decorum. Conducting the small party to the slab in the corner, he took hold of the tattered shroud and looked up for a signal from the watchman. The latter deferred to the two visitors he had brought into the grim vault. Walter Stanford exchanged a glance with his son and both braced themselves. A nod was then given to the keeper who drew back the shroud with clumsy reverence, unveiling only the head and trunk of the corpse so that the repulsive injuries to the leg remained hidden away.