Hilary Mantel - The Giant, O’Brien

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thestate.co.uk

This edition published by Fourth Estate 2010

First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Fourth Estate

Published in paperback by Fourth Estate 1999

Copyright © Hilary Mantel 1998

Hilary Mantel asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

The quotation from ‘The Cleaver Garden’ on page vii is reproduced

by kind permission of the late George MacBeth

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 9780007354900

Version 2019-09-27

Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment at

www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

For Lesley Glaister

…But then

All crib from skulls and bones who push the pen. Readers crave bodies. We’re the resurrection men.

George MacBeth, The Cleaver Garden’

Cover Page

Title Page The Giant, O’Brien Hilary Mantel

Copyright

Epigraph

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Note

About the Author

Excerpt from Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Praise

By the same author

About the Publisher

‘Bring in the cows now. Time to shut up for the night.’

There came three cows, breathing in the near-dark: swishing with the tips of their tails, their bones showing through hide. They set down their hoofs among the men, jostling. Flames from the fire danced in their eyes. Through the open door, the moon sailed against the mountain.

‘Or O’Shea will have them away over the hill,’ Connor said. Connor was their host. ‘Three cows my grandfather had of his grandfather. Never a night goes by that he doesn’t look to get the debt paid.’

‘An old quarrel,’ Claffey said. They’re the best.’

Pybus spat. ‘O’Shea, he’d grudge you the earache. If you’d a boil he’d grudge it you. His soul is as narrow as a needle.’

‘Look now, Connor,’ the Giant said. His tone was interested. ‘What’d you do if you had four cows?’

‘I can only dream of it,’ Connor said.

‘But for house-room?’

Connor shrugged. ‘They’d have to come in just the same.’

‘What if you’d six cows?’

The men would be further off the fire,’ Claffey said.

‘What if you’d ten cows?’

‘The cows would come in and the men would squat outside,’ said Pybus.

Connor nodded. ‘That’s true.’

The Giant laughed. ‘A fine host you are. The men would squat outside!’

‘We’d be safe enough out there,’ Claffey said. ‘O’Shea may want interest on the debt, but he’d never steal away a tribe of men.’

‘Such men as we,’ said Pybus.

Said Jankin, ‘What’s interest?’

‘I could never get ten cows,’ Connor said. ‘You are right, Charles O’Brien. The walls would not hold them.’

‘Well, you see,’ the Giant said. ‘There’s the limit to your ambition. And all because of some maul-and-bawl in your grandfather’s time.’

The door closed, there was only the rush light; the light out, there was only the dying fire, and the wet breathing of the beasts, and the mad glow of the red head of Pybus.

‘Draw near the embers,’ the Giant said. In the smoky half-light, his voice was a blur, like a moth’s wing. They moved forward on their stools, and Pybus, who was a boy, shifted his buttocks on the floor of bare rock. ‘What story will it be?’

‘You decide, Mester,’ Jankin said. ‘We can’t choose a tale.’

Claffey looked sideways at him, when he called the Giant ‘Mester’. The Giant noted the look. Claffey had his bad parts: but men are not quite like potatoes, where the rot spreads straight through, and when Claffey turned back to him his face was transparent, eager for the tale he wished he could disdain.

The Giant hesitated, looked deep into the smoke of the fire. Outside, mist gathered on the mountain. Shapes formed, in the corner of the room, that were not the shapes of cattle, and were unseen by Connor, Jankin and Claffey; only Pybus, who because of his youth had fewer skins, shifted his feet like a restless horse, and lifted his nose at the whiff of an alien smell. ‘What’s there?’ he said. But it was nothing, nothing: only a shunt of Claffey’s elbow as he jostled for space, only Connor breathing, only the mild champing of the white cow’s jaw.

The Giant waited until the frown melted from the face of Pybus, till he crossed his arms easily upon his knees and pillowed his head upon them. Then he allowed his voice free play. It was light, resonant, not without the accent of education; he spoke to this effect.

‘Has it ever been your misfortune to be travelling alone, in one of the great forests of this world; to find yourself, as night comes down, many hours’ journey from a Christian hearth? Have you found yourself, as the wind begins to rise, with no man or beast for company but your weary pack-animal, and no comfort in this mortal world but the crucifix beneath your shirt?’

‘Which is it?’ Jankin’s voice shook.

‘’Tis the Wild Hunt,’ Connor said. ‘He meets the dead on their nightly walk, led by a ghostly king on a ghostly horse.’

‘I will be feart,’ Jankin said.

‘No doubt,’ said Claffey.

‘I have heard it,’ Connor said. ‘But at that, it’s one of his best.’

They finished debating the tale, and then the Giant resumed, bringing them presently through the deep, rustling, lion-haunted forest to where they had not expected to be: to the Edible House. From his audience there was a sigh of bliss. They knew edible; they knew house. It had seldom been their fortune to meet the two together.

He mixed his tales like this: bliss and blood. The roof of gingerbread, then the slinking arrival of a wolf with a sweet tooth. The white-skinned, well-fleshed woman who turns to bone beneath a man’s caress; the lake where gold pieces bob, that drowns all who fish for them. Merit gains no reward, or duty done; the lucky prosper, and any of us could be that. Jesu, he thought. There were days, now, when he felt weakness run like water through legs that were as high as another man’s body. Sometimes his wrists trembled at the weight of his own hands. A man could be at the end of his invention. He could be told out; and those who have not eaten that day have sharp tempers and form a testy audience. Only last week he had asked, ‘Did you ever hear the story of St Kevin and O’Toole’s goose?’ and a dozen voices had shouted, ‘OH, NOT AGAIN!’