The Giant, O’Brien. Hilary Mantel
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!’
A cow, intent on the fire, had almost stepped on his foot. To teach it a lesson, he stepped on its own. ‘Mind my beast!’ Connor cried. The Giant glanced to heaven, but his view was blocked by the roof. Forty years ago Connor’s grandad had thatched it, and now it was pickled and black from the fire; when it rained, and the rain ran through it, it trickled a dilute sooty brown on the men’s heads. Connor had no wife, nor was likely to get one. Nor Pybus, nor Claffey; Jankin, he slightly hoped, would be unable to breed.
Changes were coming; he could see them in the fire and feel them in the whistling draught from every wall. His appetite was great, as befitted him; he could eat a granary, he could drink a barrel. But now that all Ireland is coming down to ruin together, how will giants thrive? He had made a living by going about and being a pleasant visitor, who fetched not just the gift of his giant presence but also stories and songs. He had lived by obliging a farmer who wished a rooted tree lurched up, or a town man who wanted his house pushed down so he could build a better. Strength had been a little of it, height had been more, and many hearths had welcomed him as a prodigy, a conversationalist, an illustration from nature’s book. Nature’s book is little read now, and he thought this: I had better make a living in the obvious way. I will make a living from being tall.
He turned to Claffey, who alone of them had a bit of sense. He said, ‘My mind’s made up. It’ll have to be Joe Vance.’
A day or two after, Joe Vance came up the mountain. He had a greasy hat to his head, and a flask of strong liquor bobbing at his thigh on a cord. He was a smart man, convenient and full of quips; he had been agent and impresario to a number of those who had left the district over the last ten years. He knew the art of arranging sea voyages, and had sometimes been on voyages himself. He had been in gaol, but had got out of it. He had married many wives, and some of them were dead; died of this or that, as women do. He had black whiskers, broad shoulders that showed the bones plainly, a bluff, reasonable, manly aspect, and honest blue eyes.
Connor’s cabin came into view. It had not the refinement of a chimney—since six months there was not a chimney in miles—but there was a hole made in it; indifferently, the smoke eased itself through both the hole and the thatch, so it appeared the whole house was steaming gently into the rain and mist of the morning.
Joe Vance found the cabin full of smoke, and all of them huddled around a miserable fire. His honest eyes swept over their circumstances. The Giant looked up. He was ridiculous on his stool, his knees coming up to meet his ears. ‘You should have a throne,’ Vance said abruptly.
‘Of that he is in no doubt,’ Claffey said.
‘Will you be coming on the venture?’ Vance asked him.
‘He must,’ Pybus said. ‘He speaks their lingo. Jabbers in it, anyway. We have heard him.’
‘Do you not speak English, O’Brien? I thought you were an educated giant.’
‘I have learned it and forgotten it,’ the Giant said. ‘I have sealed it up in a lead box, and I have sunk it in the depth of the sea.’
‘Fish it out, there’s a good lad,’ Vance said. ‘If any see it, grapple it to shore. You must understand, I’m not aiming to present you as a savage. Nothing at all of that kind of show.’
‘Are we going as far as Derry?’ Jankin asked. ‘I’ve heard of it, y’know.’
‘Ah, Jankin, my good simple soul,’ said the Giant. ‘Vance here, he knows how things are to be done.’
‘You are aware,’ Vance said, ‘that I was agent to the brothers Knife, very prodigious giants who you will remember well.’
‘I remember them as rather low and paltry,’ O’Brien said. ‘The larger of the Knives would scarcely come to my shoulder. As for his little brother—Pocket, I used to call him—when I went to the tavern at ten years of age, I was accustomed to clutch my pot in my fist and ease my elbow by resting it on his pate.’
‘The Knives were nothing,’ Jankin said. ‘Dwarves, they were, practically.’
Joe Vance moved his honest eyes sideways. He recalled the Knives—especially Pocket—as boys who could knock down a wall just by looking at it. Pocket was, too, uncommonly keen on his percentages, and once, when he thought he was short-changed, he had lifted