The Nine Giants Read Online Free PDF Page B

fulfilled.’
    ‘Welcome home, Nick,’ she whispered.
    They went slowly upstairs to her bedchamber. It was something which they both felt they had deserved.
     
    The change of venue was significant. The meeting was scheduled to take place at Lawrence Firethorn’s house in Shoreditch, a rather modest but welcoming abode that gave shelter to the actor’s own family and their servants as well as hospitality to the company’s four apprentices. What made the establishment function with such relative smoothness was the presiding genius of Margery Firethorn, a redoubtable woman who combined the roles of wife, mother, housekeeper and landlady with consummate ease and who still had enough energy left over to pursue other interests, to maintain a high standard of Christian observance and to terrorise anyone foolhardy enough to stand in her way. Even her husband, fearless in any other way, had been known to quail before her. Indirectly, it was she who had dictated the move to another place and Barnaby Gill spotted this at once.
    ‘Lawrence is on heat again!’ he moaned.
    ‘Lord save us!’ cried Edmund Hoode.
    ‘That is why he dare not have us at his house. In case Margery gets wind of his new
amour
.’
    ‘Who
is
the luckless creature, Barnaby?’
    ‘I know not and care not,’ said Gill with studied indifference. ‘Women are all one to me and I like not any of the infernal gender. My passions are dedicated to intimacyon a much higher plane.’ He puffed at his pipe and blew out rings of smoke. ‘What else did our Creator in his munificence make pretty boys for, I ask?’
    It was a rhetorical question and Edmund Hoode would in any case not have been drawn into such a discussion. Barnaby Gill’s tendencies were well known and generally tolerated by a company that valued his acting skills and his remarkable comic gifts. Hoode had never plumbed the secret of why his companion – such a gushing fountain of pleasure upon the stage – was so morose and petulant when he left it. The playwright preferred the public clown to the private cynic. They were sitting in a room at the Queen’s Head as they waited for Firethorn to arrive. The three men were all sharers with Lord Westfield’s Men, ranked players who were named in the royal patent for the company and who took the leading roles in any performance. There were four other sharers but it was this triumvirate that effectively dictated policy and controlled the day-to-day running of the company.
    Lawrence Firethorn was the undisputed leader. Even when he burst through the door and gave them an elaborate bow, he was simply asserting his superiority.
    ‘Gentlemen, your servant!’
    ‘You are late as usual, sir,’ snapped Gill.
    ‘I was detained by family matters.’
    ‘Your drink awaits you, Lawrence,’ said Hoode.
    ‘Thank you, Edmund. I am glad that one of my partners in this enterprise has some concern for me.’
    ‘Oh,
I
have concern in good measure,’ said Gill. ‘I wasa model of concern during yesterday’s performance when I feared you might not survive to the end of it.’
    ‘Me, sir?’ Firethorn bridled. ‘You speak of me?’
    ‘Who else, sir? It was Count Orlando who was puffing and panting so in the heat of the day. And it was that same noble Italian who became so flustered that he inserted four lines from
Vincentio’s Revenge.
’
    ‘You lie, you dog!’ howled Firethorn.
    ‘Indeed, I do. It was six lines.’
    ‘My Count Orlando was simon pure.’
    ‘Give or take an occasional blemish.’
    ‘You dare to scorn my performance!’
    ‘By no means,’ said Gill, ready with a final thrust. ‘I thought that your Count Orlando was excellent – but not nearly as fine as your Vincentio in the same play!’
    ‘You viper! You maggot! You pipe-smoking pilchard!’
    ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ soothed Hoode. ‘We have come together to do business and not to trade abuse.’
    ‘The man is a scurvy rogue!’ yelled Firethorn.
    ‘At least I remember my