Edward Marston - The Nine Giants

It was spattered with blood that was not his own.

Triumph was followed by setback. After his victory in the field on the previous afternoon, Lawrence Firethorn came off badly in skirmishes the next day. It began at home with a spectacular row over the household accounts. He fought hard but his wife was at her most vehement and sent him off with his ears ringing. No comfort awaited him at the Queen’s Head. His first encounter was with Edmund Hoode who refused outright to provide any more verses for the actor-manager’s romantic purposes and backed up that refusal with the threat of quitting the company. While Firethorn was still recovering from that shock, Barnaby Gill chose his moment to praise the fine performance given by Owen Elias in Love and Fortune and to let his colleague know that he was in danger of being eclipsed by one of the hired men. There was worse to come. Alexander Marwood sidled past with a hideous smile to announce that he had now decided to sign a contract with Rowland Ashway for the sale of the inn.

When he had received Matilda Stanford in a private room, he had felt like a king. That was yesterday. Today his subjects were in armed revolt and he could not put them down. He prowled the yard at the Queen’s Head while he tried to compose himself. It was the worst possible time to accost him with a handful of poems.

‘Good day, Master Firethorn.’

‘Who are you?’ snarled the other.

‘Abel Strudwick. I believe that you know of me.’

‘As much as I care to, sir. Away with you!’

‘But Master Bracewell mentioned my name.’

‘What care I for that?’

‘I am a poet, sir. I would perform on the scaffold.’

‘Then get yourself hanged for ugliness,’ said the irate Firethorn. ‘You may twitch on the gallows and provide good entertainment for the lower sort.’

Strudwick bristled. ‘What say you, sir?’

‘Avoid my sight, you thing of hair!’

‘I am a water poet!’

‘Then piss your verses up against a wall, sir.’

‘I looked for more civility than this.’

‘You have come to the wrong shop.’

‘So I see,’ said the waterman, casting aside his former reverence for the actor. ‘But I’ll not be put down by you, sir, you strutting peacock with a face like a dying donkey, you whoreson, glass-gazing, beard-trimming cozener!’

‘Will you bandy words with me, sir!’ roared Firethorn with teeth bared. ‘Take that epileptic visage away from here before it frights the souls of honest folk. I’ll not talk to you, you knave, you rascal, you rag-wearing son of Satan. Stand off, sir, and take that stink with you.’

‘I am as wholesome a man as you, Master Firethorn, and will not give way to a brazen-faced lecher who opens his mouth but to fart out villainy.’

‘You bawd, you beggar, you slave!’

‘Thief, coward, rogue!’

‘Dog’s-head!’

‘Trendle-tail!’

‘Hedge-bird!’

‘You walking quagmire!’

Abel Strudwick cackled at the insult and circled his man to attack again. Having come to offer poetry, he was instead trading invective. It was exhilarating.

‘Your father was a pox-riddled pimp!’ he yelled.

‘Your mother, Mistress Slither, conceived you in a fathom of foul mud. She was mounted by a rutting boar and dropped you in her next litter, the old sow.’

‘Snotty nose!’

‘Pig face!’

‘Pandar!’

‘Mongrel!’

Strudwick grinned. ‘Your wife, sir, under pretence of keeping a decent home, cuckolds you with every gamester in the city. Diseased she is, surely, and dragged through the cesspits of whoredom by the hour. Even as we speak, some lusty bachelor is riding her pell mell to damnation!’

Firethorn writhed at the insult and replied in kind. The volume and intensity of the argument had risen so much by now that a small crowd had formed to cheer and jibe and urge the combatants on. It was a fascinating contest with advantage swinging first one way and then the other. Firethorn had clear vocal superiority and used all the tricks of his art to subdue the waterman. Strudwick had greater experience on his side and vituperation gushed out of him in an endless, inventive stream. Actor met streetfighter in a war of words. It was at the point where they were about to exchange blows that Nicholas Bracewell came running across the yard and dived between them to hold them off.

‘Peace, sirs!’ he exclaimed. ‘Stand apart.’

‘I’ll run this black devil through!’ said Firethorn.

‘I’ll tear his liver out and eat it!’ said Strudwick.

‘Calm down and talk this over as friends.’

‘Friends!’ howled the waterman.

‘Mortal enemies,’ said Firethorn. ‘I’d not befriend this whelp if he was the last man alive in creation.’

‘Let me be judge of this quarrel,’ said Nicholas.

But they were too inflamed for a reasoned discussion of their complaints. They eyed each other aggressively like two dogs bred for fighting. Since the book holder was still keeping them apart, they resolved on another form of attack. Abel Strudwick waved a sheaf of poems in the air and glared at Firethorn.

‘I challenge you to a flyting contest, sir!’ he said.

‘Let it be in public,’ retorted the other.

‘Upon the stage in this yard.’

‘Before a full audience.’

‘Name the day and the time.’

‘Next Monday,’ said Firethorn. ‘Be here at one. When the clock strikes the half-hour, we’ll begin.’

‘My waterman’s wit will destroy you utterly.’

‘Take care you do not drown yourself in it.’

‘I will bring friends to support me.’

‘All London knows my reputation.’

‘Stop, sirs,’ said Nicholas. ‘This is madness.’

But his pleas went unheard. Pride dictated terms. Lawrence Firethorn and Abel Strudwick had gone too far to pull back now. They would continue their duel on the following Monday with sharper weapons.

It would be a fight to the death.

The sky over Windsor was dark and swollen as the funeral cortège walked solemnly up the path to St John’s Church. Only a select gathering of family and friends had been invited to watch Lieutenant Michael Delahaye lowered into his final resting place. The priest led the way in white surplice and black cassock with his prayer book open in his hands. Six bearers carried the elm coffin with its ornate brass handles and its small brass commemorative plate. The widowed mother led the procession, leaning for support on the arm of her brother, Walter Stanford, and weeping copiously. Next came her four daughters, each one stricken by the loss, each one helped along by a husband. Black was the predominant colour and Matilda Stanford, who came next, wore a taffeta dress trimmed with black lace and a matching hat with a black veil. Leaning on the arm of her stepson, she wept genuine tears of sorrow and her sympathy for the bereaved was clear to see. Behind her came more figures in black and more lamentation. Michael Delahaye was going out of the world on a tide of grief.

The service was accompanied throughout by sobs, cries and moans as suffering mourners tried to come to terms both with the death of the dear departed and with the brutal nature of that death. Walter Stanford had deemed it wise to keep back the worst details of the horror. His sister and the rest of the family had enough misery to accommodate as it was. They had all been fearful when Michael had announced his intention of joining the army that set out for the Netherlands. His safe return was a cause for celebration and they had planned a small banquet in his honour. Instead of a long table loaded with rich food and fine wine, they were marking his homecoming with funeral bakemeats.

Matilda Stanford went through it all in a daze. The church was filled with so much high emotion that she was overwhelmed and heard very little of the service that was being intoned by the vicar. Only when the coffin was taken out into the graveyard and interred in the family vault did she come out of her reverie and she felt a stab of shame that gave her a prickly sensation. She was not thinking about Michael Delahaye, nor yet about his poor mother, nor even about her husband’s grievous pain. She was not listening to any of the muttered words of comfort that were heard all round her as they began to disperse. She was not succumbing to notions of death itself and how it might visit her when the hour drew near.