Edward Marston - The Nine Giants

Celebrations began early at the White Hart in Cheapside. Wine, beer and ale were plentiful and there was food enough to satisfy the most gluttonous appetites. As the day wore on, the taproom became so full with boisterous apprentices that they spilt out into the yard and passed the time in japes and jeers and being sick in the privies. Serving wenches were groped, ostlers were mocked and scapegoats had their breeches torn off. Small fights broke out to liven up the occasion and old scores were settled between youths from rival trades. Afternoon found the drunken rowdiness slowly changing into a brawling fever for which the area was famous.

Cheapside was the broadest and straightest of London’s streets, a major artery that carried the lifeblood of the city. Along the centre of the street, from St Paul’s to the Carfax, was an open market for all manner of goods. Every important public procession passed through Cheapside and shoddily produced goods were traditionally burnt there. It was another kind of procession that now staggered along, a ragged band of apprentices who had been gathered up from other inns and taverns along the street by the industrious Firk who had spread the word that beer was being sold at reduced prices in the White Hart and that a wild time was in store for all who came. As Firk led the way into the yard, the newcomers were given a hostile reception by those already packed in and there was much preliminary pushing and shoving. Abundant supplies of beer and ale were brought out to quench the thirst of all and incite them on to more destructive pleasures. Firk watched until a stew was bubbling furiously and he gave a signal to the man who was watching it all from a room in the upper gallery with his one good eye.

James Renfrew calmly finished his glass of wine and crossed to give the naked woman who lolled on the bed a last kiss. Then he pulled on his doublet and went off downstairs to take charge of the fire that his accomplice was so busily stoking up. With sword in hand, he ran into the yard and jumped up onto a table so that he could stamp on it with his feet to gain attention. Even the swirling revelry was stilled for a second. Renfrew was a striking figure with a voice that knew how to command.

‘Friends!’ he yelled. ‘There’s villainy abroad!’

‘Where, sir?’ shouted Firk on cue.

‘Close by this inn. I saw it with my own eyes. Five brawny Dutch apprentices set on one poor English lad and gave him such a drubbing that I fear for his life.’

‘Shame!’ roared Firk.

‘Where are they?’ howled a dozen voices.

‘They are everywhere!’ replied Renfrew, pointing his sword in different directions as he spoke. ‘Aliens are taking over London. We have Genoese, we have Venetians, we have cheese-eating Swiss. You may find Germans in every street and Frenchmen in every bawdy house. There are Dutchmen in Billingsgate and Polish in Rotherhithe. We are beset by strangers!’

‘Drive the aliens out!’ bellowed Firk.

‘Vengeance on the strangers!’

‘Break their foreign heads!’

‘Smash their houses!’

‘Kill them! Kill them!’

‘London belongs to Londoners!’ urged Renfrew.

‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’

‘We defeated the Spanish Armada,’ he said, ‘yet those same swarthy gentlemen now swagger through our city and defile our womenfolk! Foreigners out, I say!’

‘Foreigners out! Foreigners out!’

Renfrew whipped them up until their bloodlust was so strong it simply wanted direction in order to expend itself. He and Firk led the charge out of the yard. With a hundred or more berserk apprentices at their back, they ran along Eastcheap and into Lombard Street, knocking aside anyone who got in their way, smashing windows out of sheer malice and screaming obscenities. Constables came out to confront them but the ferocity of the mob swept the thin line of authority aside as if it had not been there, surging on into Gracechurch Street then swinging right towards the Bridge with gathering fury. In the space of a few minutes, aimless youths with too much beer in their bellies had been turned into a vicious machine of destruction. It rolled remorselessly on.

Hans Kippel was close to the wharf when he heard the rising tumult. Frustrated at being kept indoors on a public holiday, he had begged permission to go out into the little garden at the rear of the house and had wandered off down to the river when nobody was looking. The boy hoped to find Abel Strudwick so that he could listen to some more verses but the waterman was nowhere in sight. What he saw instead was a torrent of baying apprentices, leaving a trail of debris on the Bridge as they poured into the object of their hate. Southwark was a haven for immigrants from many lands. Swinging boards from shops advertised craftsmen from all over Europe.

Enraged beyond all control, the mob tore down the boards and kicked in doors and shattered windows. Any opposition was ruthlessly stamped on and innocent bystanders were knocked flying on every side. Hans Kippel was hypnotised by the horror of it all. As the angry crowd ran towards him, he stood there trembling for his young life. Out of the mass of faces that bore down on him, he picked out two that he had seen before and quailed even more. One of the men wore a patch over the eye and the other a stubby beard. A memory which had been trapped inside his brain for a long time was suddenly released and it made him cry out in agony.

He found the strength to run but his flight was in vain. They were too fast and too crazed and too numerous. Before he had gone twenty yards, he was knocked over in the stampede and trampled by a score of feet. Using the cover of the mob, Firk slipped a knife into the boy’s back then staggered on after James Renfrew. They had done what they had planned without even having to storm Anne Hendrik’s house to get at their prey. The apprentices were still carried along by their own senselessness as the two agitators who had started the riot now vanished quietly around a corner.

Hans Kippel lay motionless. His holiday was over.

In a house of sorrow there was still an avenue of escape. All that Matilda Stanford had to do was to read again the letter which Lawrence Firethorn had sent her. In flowery language and a beautiful hand, he had written to give her details of the performance at the Nine Giants in Richmond the following week. It never occurred to her that he had not actually penned the missive himself but had instead dictated it to Matthew Lipton, the scrivener who was used by Westfield’s Men to copy out the sides from the one complete version of any play they staged. Lipton’s fine calligraphy was also in evidence in the poem that accompanied the letter. Here again, Firethorn had relied on another to supply his inspiration. Unable to coax any new verses out of Edmund Hoode, the actor-manager had used a poem he had once commissioned from the resident poet while in pursuit of Lady Rosamund Varley at an earlier phase of his lustfulness.

Matilda Stanford knew nothing of this and swooned at his ardour as if it had been new-minted that second. As she sat in her bedchamber with the letter and poem on her knees, she thought only of her lover’s irresistible charm and felt the touch of his lips on her hand. Married to a mature and preoccupied husband, she had never known true passion before and could only guess at its implications. Innocence protected her from understanding Firethorn’s true intent. All that she knew was that she had been offered an assignation by a prince among men. Though it would be immensely difficult to contrive, she had to find a way to get to Richmond.

Prudence Ling knocked on the door and came tripping in on her toes. Obliged to be sombre elsewhere in the house, she could show her girlish spirits when alone with her mistress. She saw what Matilda was reading and gave a conspiratorial giggle.