The Smallest Man

by Frances Quinn

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  To Björn, Benny, Agnetha and Frida, who have no idea how much help they’ve been.

  The year is 1625. King James is dead and England has a new king and queen: Charles, the serious, awkward second son forced onto the throne by the death of his more popular brother, and Henrietta Maria, the fifteen-year-old devoutly Catholic Princess of France.

  Charles has inherited a country where cracks are beginning to show. After repeated clashes with his father, Parliament is spoiling for a fight, and Charles, like James, believes his God-given right to rule trumps their increasing demands for a say in England’s affairs.

  After years of war against the Catholic countries of France and Spain, and the Catholic-led attempt to kill King James in the Gunpowder Plot, English Catholics are hated and feared; they can be fined and even imprisoned for practising their faith. But Protestants are divided among themselves too: the growing Puritan movement want a Church shorn of the ‘Catholic’ trimmings of saints’ days and elaborate ritual – and of bishops, who, being appointed by the king, allow royal control over the Church. And with Puritans strong in Parliament, religious differences are deepening the political rift.

  Into this England come the new king and his bride – and their marriage becomes the seed of a crisis that will split the country in two, pit brother against brother, and ultimately lead the people of England to kill their king.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  My name is Nat Davy. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? There was a time when people up and down the land knew my name, but that was long ago – and they knew only half the story. It’s been quite a life, the one I’ve had; I was there when they turned the world upside down, and I was there, right at the heart of it all, during the turbulent times that led us down the road to that day. So I got to thinking that I should write it all down, because there’s been a lot said about those times, and not all of it’s right.

  But when should my tale begin? Not when I was born, a butcher’s son, in a tiny cottage just like all the other tiny cottages in Oakham. Who’d have thought then that I’d ever have much of a story to tell? Perhaps it starts when people began to nudge each other and stare as I walked with my mother to market, or the first time someone whispered that we were cursed. But I didn’t know then. She said not to listen to them, that I was just a slow starter and I’d grow in my own good time, and I believed her. No, I think my story begins on the day of the Oakham Fair, in the year of 1625. When I was ten years old and I found out what I was.

  The June sun rose early and we set out soon after dawn, my father striding out at a pace that left the rest of the family a little behind, as usual. When I was younger, he used to swing me up and sit me on his broad, solid shoulders. I felt like a king up there, looking out over the hedgerows and waving to the cows in the fields. And I remember – I’m almost sure I remember – him smiling up at me and saying ‘My fine boy’. But as I got older, but no bigger, he stopped carrying me on his shoulders and walked ahead of us instead. My mother said it was just because he hated to dawdle, and I believed that too, back then.

  Mother carried my baby sister on her hip that morning, Annie’s fat little fingers locked in my mother’s long brown curls, and my brother Sam walked with me. He was taller than I was, even though he was only eight, but he liked to gaze around, kick a pebble along or pick a blade of grass and make it whistle, and he never minded strolling at my pace.

  We always heard the fair before we saw it: a swirl of shouts and music and song. It came only twice a year, and the rest of the time not much happened in Oakham, so our steps quickened when we heard that noise and caught the smell of smoke and hot roast pork. And that year, there was a special reason for the way my belly turned over as we got close.

  I looked up at Sam; he was walking as though there was a string through the tip of his nose, drawing him towards the smell, and there was a blissful look in his eyes, as if he could already taste the meat.

  ‘Where’s the penny?’ I whispered.

  I’d made sure he had it when we left, but my brother had a talent for losing things. He opened his hand and showed me it.

  ‘Tell me again,’ he said, ‘when do we—’

  I whispered the plan again, for about the tenth time, and he nodded.

  By the time we reached the edge of the green, the noise had splintered into a hundred different sounds, all fighting to be heard: snatches of music from a fiddle band, stallholders hollering their wares, laughter gusting out from the ale tents.

  We’re here. It’s really going to happen.

  My mother hitched Annie higher on her hip and issued her instructions.

  ‘You two, stay close to me. Do not wander off. And Nat, don’t speak to anyone and don’t let anyone hear you speak. There are strangers here, from all over.’

  She said the same every fair day. I didn’t know, then, why she didn’t want anyone who didn’t know me to hear me talk.

  My father strode off, and we followed close behind. As we approached the green, a big group of lads appeared from the opposite direction. They jostled past, and I got separated from my mother and Sam. I tried to catch them up, but I couldn’t push my way through the crowd, and then suddenly they weren’t there. I was in a forest of legs, and I couldn’t see my way through. I tried to jump up and catch a glimpse of my mother’s blue dress, but it was hopeless, I couldn’t see past all the people.

  Where are they?

  The crowd was pushing and jostling, and people couldn’t even see me in front of them. Just when I was certain I’d be knocked off my feet and trampled, I heard my mother call my name, and then there she was, pushing through the crowd, Annie in her arms and Sam close behind her.

  ‘There you are! This is no good, it’s so crowded this year – Sam, put him up on your shoulders.’

  As Sam swung me up, my father appeared, his face a picture of irritation.

  ‘I told you this would happen,’ he said. ‘Now come on, let’s get going.’

  He turned to carve our path through the crowd. Now I was on Sam’s shoulders, I could stretch up and see it all: burly wrestlers grunting and grappling, their skins shiny with goose grease; a juggler swirling wooden clubs that surely must be tied to his hands with invisible string; a man swallowing fire; a fiddle band calling silly, giggling girls and red-faced boys up to dance. A pink pig turned on a spit, charring the hairs on its nose and dripping glistening fat into the flames, and over all the other noise came the shouts of the fair people listing the wonders hidden in the tents: a sheep that could count to ten; a man with two noses; a child as black as coal. But I was looking for only one thing, and there was no sign of it.

  She had to be there; they’d said she’d be there. But we’d walked right round the fair, and there was only a last line of tents to go.

  Maybe she’d escaped, run back to the forest.

  Then Sam tapped my leg, nodding towards a stripy tent, and I caught the words the man outside was calling out:

  ‘The one and only faerie woman! See her walk and dance!’

  I leaned down and whispered in his ear, ‘Got the penny?’

  He rolled his eyes, and patted his pocket. Panic flashed across his face.

  ‘It was the other side,’ I said.

  He felt in the other pocket, and his shoulders relaxed.

  ‘I was just joking you,’ he said, and I p
inched his ear to make him think I believed him.

  My plan was to sneak away while my father lifted the iron ball and my mother was watching him. But he liked to wait for it to draw a good audience, and we walked round the green again before we finally went across. A skinny lad who looked as though he’d have trouble lifting a spoon, let alone the iron ball, was chancing his luck; the crowd laughed as he heaved the ball as far as his knees, held it with shaking arms, then dropped it. Still my father didn’t move.

  ‘Aren’t you going up?’ asked my mother.

  ‘I’ll wait a while yet,’ he replied. ‘Let the lads have their fun first.’

  I wished he’d hurry up. There were little fishes swimming round in my belly at the thought of what was going to happen, and I wanted to get on with it. I looked down to check Sam was ready, but of course he wasn’t watching at all. His gaze was fixed on a moon-faced woman beside him, or to be more accurate, on the pie she was eating. As she bit into it, a flake of pastry broke off and floated to the ground. Sam’s eyes followed it all the way down, then flicked back to her mouth and watched her chew. That was exactly what I’d been worried about: Sam would never let me down on purpose but he was easily distracted, and the longer we stood there waiting, the harder it would be to keep his attention sharp. Or as sharp as it ever got. And if we missed our chance, we might not get another one.

  I pinched his shoulder and whispered: ‘Be ready!’

  He rummaged in his pocket again.

  ‘Ready.’

  At last, after three more hopefuls had failed, my father winked at my mother and said:

  ‘Time to show them how it’s done.’

  My father was as strong as an ox; he could heft the ball straight up if he wanted to. But he’d put on a show first. He made a big performance of rolling up his sleeves, and gave the ball an experimental little lift, then shook his head and put it down again.

  ‘Now,’ I whispered to Sam.

  Gripping my legs, he turned and began weaving through the crowd. I glanced back; every head faced forward, watching my father circle the ball as though he was preparing to take it by surprise. Mother was going to be furious when she realised we were gone, but it would be worth it. Or perhaps she’d be so pleased and surprised she’d forget to be angry. It depended how quickly it worked. I’d thought about that a lot. Would the transformation happen there and then or later? Perhaps while I slept? Which meant we’d still get a wallop that night, but I could suffer that if everything was different in the morning.

  As we got near the tent, a flap at the back opened, and a boy held it aside for the people who’d been inside to come out. I craned my neck to peer in, but he dropped the canvas too quickly.

  The barkers had made a big fuss about the faerie woman when they came to drum up custom for the fair.

  ‘First time in Oakham – captured from the forest!’ they’d shouted. ‘Thirty-eight years old, and only three foot high! A ha’penny to see her walk and dance!’

  All that week, I thought about her. Faeries could grant wishes, everyone knew that. What if I asked her to make me grow? ‘It’ll happen in its own good time,’ my mother kept saying, but it hadn’t, not even a little bit.

  It wasn’t that my size had no advantages. I was a nosy child and I’d discovered that, because I looked no older than baby Annie, I could watch people quite unnoticed, and nobody cared what I heard them say. So I’d look and listen and tell my mother that old Ma Tyrell didn’t really like her son’s new wife, because I’d seen how her fingers twitched when she said the girl’s name, like she itched to give her a pinch. Or that the baker was cheating people with lightweight loaves, after I heard him scold his apprentice for forgetting to keep his thumb on the scale when he thought no one was listening. My mother used to shake her head and say I had wisdom beyond my years.

  But I didn’t want wisdom beyond my years. I wanted to be like other boys: to climb the tallest trees, and run the fastest, and skim pebbles all the way across the pond. I wanted to help with the harvest like Sam did. And I wanted to be big enough to fight Jack Edgecombe from the dairy, who’d told everybody he’d seen me out riding Ma Tyrell’s dog like it was a horse. Which was not true. Sam punched him on the nose for that but I wanted to be able to do it myself. So I made up my mind to see the faerie.

  I’d been working up the courage to steal a ha’penny from the pouch my father kept under the mattress, but then Sam found a penny, just lying in the road. He’d have handed it straight to Mother, but I wasn’t going to let that happen; if I could persuade him to keep it, I knew he’d share it. Sam was like that, soft as a baby mouse’s belly. So I kept talking about the saffron buns and jam tarts and apple turnovers there’d be at the fair, until his conscience was no match for his stomach. It was bad of me; if Mother found out, there’d be trouble, and she always whacked him a bit harder. But I wanted the faerie to make me grow more than I’d ever wanted anything.

  Sam’s generosity had its limits though, and he refused to spend his share coming in with me. For a ha’penny, he’d worked out, he could get two saffron buns, an apple turnover and a go on the hoopla, with the chance of winning a gingerbread man. I’d told him the faerie would probably be able to summon up any amount of buns and pastries by magic, but he couldn’t bring himself to chance food he could see and smell against the powers of a creature he hadn’t even glimpsed, so we agreed he’d wait outside.

  As the fair man ushered the next four people in, we stood behind a family with two daughters, and a gangly young man in the company of two dairymaids, one plump and pink, the other tall and sharp-looking, like a heron. I supposed I’d be going in with them. As we waited, Sam kept a jealous eye on the hoopla stall, growling with irritation when a little girl won and chose a gingerbread man as her prize.

  The boy stuck his head out of the tent and the man beckoned the family in front of us across. The last people had only been in there a few minutes; what if the dairymaids had wishes too, and the time ran out before she got to me? If I was stuck behind them, she wouldn’t even see me. I thought for a minute then whispered in Sam’s ear.

  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t know them.’

  ‘Go on…’

  He sighed and tapped the arm of the thin dairymaid.

  ‘Pardon me, miss. My brother wants to see the faerie but our mother says I’m not to leave him alone, and we’ve only half a penny to spend. Will you take him in?’

  ‘Of course we will,’ she said, lifting me off Sam’s shoulders and balancing me on her bony hip. ‘Look at those curls – what a little sweetie.’

  Sam’s grin told me I was going to suffer him calling me ‘little sweetie’ for weeks.

  ‘How old is he?’ said the pink dairymaid, chucking me under the chin with a surprisingly rough-skinned finger.

  Sam’s face flushed; he was hopeless at lying.

  ‘Not very old,’ he mumbled. ‘About two, probably.’

  They didn’t question that and after another few minutes of the dairymaids clucking at me, the fair man called us forward. The fishes in my belly were doing somersaults now.

  Make sure you say the wish in time.

  It was hot and dark inside, with only a couple of lanterns for light, and it took a few seconds before I saw the cage. The faerie was sitting inside it, hunched over a little stool.

  The fair boy cracked a long wooden stick against the bars.

  ‘Up,’ he said.

  She stood, keeping her eyes on the ground. She didn’t look like I’d thought a faerie would. She was about three feet tall, like a child, but she wasn’t a child; her face looked tired, like my mother’s. Her brown hair was stringy with sweat and there was no sign of wings.

  ‘I’ve seen better ones than that,’ said the pink dairymaid. ‘Last year they had one tied up. Said it could bite.’

  ‘It might still be dangerous,’ said the young man, slipping his arm round the pink dairymaid’s waist. He rattled the bars. The faerie didn’t move.

  ‘Walk,’
said the fair boy.

  Still looking at the ground, the faerie paced round the four sides of the cage.

  ‘Make it dance,’ said the pink dairymaid.

  The fair boy slid the stick through the bars and gave the faerie a vicious little jab. She began a clumsy jig, hopping from one foot to the other with her shoulders bowed and her empty eyes looking straight ahead as though we weren’t there.

  ‘Call that dancing?’ said the young man. ‘My dog dances better than that.’

  He smirked at the dairymaids, and the bony one gave a screechy laugh, right in my ear.

  I had to get my wish in, before the time ran out. But if the faerie could do magic, why was she letting herself be kept in a cage and poked with sticks? I’d practised how to ask politely but my words tumbled out in a rush.

  ‘Pardon me my name is Nat Davy and I’ve come to ask if you can grant a wish.’

  The dairymaid nearly dropped me; the others turned and stared. The faerie walked to the front of the cage, narrowing her eyes as though she thought she knew me from somewhere. I asked the dairymaid to put me down, then walked to the cage and looked up at the faerie. I was starting to get a cold feeling that this wasn’t going to turn out the way I’d hoped, but I couldn’t go away without trying.

  ‘Please, can you grant wishes?’ I said.

  She leaned forward and whispered something, but I didn’t catch it because at the same time, the fair boy said, ‘How old are you?’

  Something about the way he said it made me not want to tell, but it didn’t seem a good idea to lie in front of the faerie.

  ‘I’m ten.’

  The faerie came close to the bars and this time I heard what she whispered.

  ‘Get out of here.’

  The fair boy yelled out, ‘Dan! In here!’

  ‘Run,’ said the faerie. ‘Now.’

  But as the man pushed through the curtain, the boy took hold of my arm.

  ‘You won’t believe this,’ he said. ‘This one’s ten years old. Just said so. Talks as clear as you or me.’