“Can they not share the groats? If they both work hard?”
Old Finch sighed, bowed to John Kent and backed away respectfully, until he smashed into the nearest table leg.
“Went okay.” Old Finch rubbed the back of his head. “He’s a reasonable man. I’ll collect your pay. How long will you be here, you reckon?”
“Um…most of the day?” Perkis guessed. He just wanted Old Finch gone.
“Right. Hand it over tonight. I’m back to the winnowing.” Old Finch waddled off towards the front door, leaving Perkis and Finch at the mercy of the serfs’ enemy.
CHAPTER Three
“Do not be afraid,” the giant thundered. Fear, though, seemed a sensible option.
“We’re not afraid,” Perkis lied, as they hid under the table. “We were hoping you’d dropped some food.”
John Kent fetched a bowl of carrot soup. The boys took turns lowering their bucket into the bowl and drinking from it. “My friends swore I was making it up,” the giant explained. “But I persuaded one to come and check you out.”
A short time later came a knock at the door.
“This is David Essex,” said John Kent. “A councillor from Stubbing.” Stubbing was a town three leagues away. “Your fame may spread far and wide.”
David Essex had pockmarked skin, tight black curly hair and a thick dark beard. He wore a long shirt and suede breeches like John Kent, and stared at them with cold grey eyes. Most importantly, he had a narrow nose with hairs growing out of it. Worried, Perkis took out the slingshot as John Kent spoke.
“Unless you are about to sneeze – ” he said (at which David Essex shook his head), “you won’t need emergency intervention. Relax. You will soon breathe easier, no fear of Plague.”
John Kent watched anxiously. Perkis peered at David Essex's nose. Along the tabletop, Finch had his hands over his eyes. No point dawdling. He took aim at the left nostril, and fired a shot. The pellet popped straight back out, landing on the table near Perkis’s feet.
“Owww!!” David Essex wailed, like an outsized cry-baby.
“Sorry, sire,” Perkis said. “Missed.”
“Missed?” The nobleman clenched his fist. “You might miss – I won’t!” he warned.
“Let the boy have another try,” John Kent urged.
“How about jumping in?” Finch suggested quietly.
“No way.” Perkis felt like running. But there was less chance of escape here than in the daisy field. “If this is a fail, it’s your turn,” Perkis said, taking aim when David Essex nodded.
“Climbing the maypole was easier than this,” Finch replied.
“Staying awake through the priest’s sermon is easier than this.” Perkis pretended to fall asleep as if sitting in church. Eyes closed, he drooped his head – and loosened his grip. The shot flew from its sling…
His eyes shot open. “Crap.”
“What?” Finch asked in a panicked voice.
David Essex was snorting like a ticklish horse being tickled to within an inch of its horsey life. A deadly explosion couldn’t be far off. Not again, Perkis thought.
His nose was within reach. Swinging into the right nostril, Perkis thrust his brush at the tangle of hairs like a valiant knight fighting a particularly aggressive haystack. Dirt, dust and grimy snot rained down on his head.
“Al-right!!” he heard Finch bellow.
Finch had caught a good deal of David Essex’s pale snot in the bucket by the time Perkis rejoined him on the table. He was hugging it like it held freshly laid eggs.
“You see, Perkins?” John Kent lectured. “Like I always say, get in there! No more potshots. You're not David against Goliath. No! You're a nose plumber.”
Typical, thought Perkis. No thanks at all. As he wiped himself down, he remembered. “The brush! It got stuck in there,” he whispered to Finch.
Finch bravely called out to David Essex. “One more, sire?”
“Alright, worth another shilling, I think.” The giant, his mood much improved, lifted Finch to within touching distance of his cluster of nose hairs.
“Have a look round while you’re in there!” Perkis laughed.
Suddenly at the edge of a giant’s face, Finch had to work out what to do. He was strong, and he imagined, so were a giant’s nose hairs. He yanked on one to pull himself up to the nose.
David Essex’s scream was so loud, a glass goblet fell from the nearby dresser and smashed on the kitchen floor. He jerked his head back, leaving Finch clinging to the nose-hair.
“Help him!” Perkis shouted. If Finch fell to the floor, he would smash like the goblet.
The nose-hair gave way. John Kent shot out an arm and caught Finch mid-fall.
“Attacked! Assaulted!” David Essex yowled. “What have you done to me, Kent? Baron Bigge shall hear of this!”
“Come now, accidents will happen, Essex,” John Kent said.
“Master Kent,” Perkis said. “My brush is stuck in his nose!”
“Can they, um, fetch their little device? No charge,” John Kent asked once David Essex had calmed down. (He seemed to love making a fuss.)
David Essex curled his lip as John Kent lifted them up to him again.
What to do? I could really use some advice, Perkis thought. Sometimes he yearned to talk to his brother. He remembered almost nothing of Ferkis. Maybe he hadn’t survived the Black Death. But if he had, Perkis hoped his giant master was not too horrible.
The brush was within their reach, but they weren’t taking any chances. They made their way carefully into David Essex’s nose. Then Perkis saw it – a spongy growth above their heads. It was glowing. Bright green.
“Stay away from that one,” he advised, taking a deep breath.
“My pleasure,” Finch said, surveying the space. A giant’s nose was bigger than a serf’s home. He shook his head. “One bucket’s never going to be enough for all the gloop.”
“I’ll think of something,” replied Perkis. At that moment, he was thinking of how to avoid more nosework. He didn’t want to encounter any more green bogeys. But then John Kent wouldn’t be happy. He seemed fine if you did as he wanted. The test of good character, though – as Uncle Ethel said – was how a person behaved when you weren’t doing what they wanted. Perkis wasn’t confident John Kent would pass that test.
Then everything went black. The boys were knocked flying by a knobbly fingertip. David Essex was wriggling it into every agonizingly itchy area, wedging them in the squelchy dark.
“No picking!” Perkis shouted. If this job turned them into small, squishy, angry formerly human bogeys, and didn’t change their lives for the better first, he didn’t know what he might do.
CHAPTER Four
“There you go, Perkins.”
John Kent paid Perkis two groats. Couldn’t get his name right, but he had paid. They were ordered to return the next morning.
They headed down Stinky Hill in the noonday heat. Old Finch was winnowing wheat in the field, with a dozen other serfs. He was complaining about anything and everything.
“If there’s no rain to soften the ground, how can I plough? Can you tell me that, son?”
“No, Dad,” replied Finch.
“How much you got?”
“Two groats,” said Finch. “One for me, one for Perkis.” Finch knew his father earned a groat a week.
“Unbelievable,” Old Finch responded. “Is that all?”
That was Old Finch. If he’d come home and found his house made entirely of gold, he would have moaned how small it was. Had the river turned to tasty mead, he would be cursing his luck that he couldn’t swim.
“You negotiated it, Dad!” Finch wailed.
“Well…” Old Finch raised an eyebrow, like whoever had done the deal needed their head examined. “I’ll look after it. Not a word to anyone. I’ll invest it for you.”
Old Finch drank at the tavern after work most evenings. Perkis couldn’t see how they would benefit from that kind of investment. But they handed ov
er the money and set off for their usual job. Halfway there, an angry voice rang out.
“There you are!!”
Farmer Farnes was lumbering in their direction. He didn’t look happy. In truth, his boil looked happier than the rest of him, and it had to spend all day and night in his face. Next thing, the Farmer had grabbed their tunic collars.
“Riiiiight, you little grave-robbers! What have you done with the bones?!”
“What are you talking about?” Perkis protested. Farnes had finally cracked under the strain of being so horrible.
“Don’t play games with me!” Farnes ranted.
Perkis couldn’t think of anyone he’d less like to play games with. Farmer Farnes was as much fun as a demented scarecrow come to life.
“You were running about this churchyard. Graves have been disturbed. Bones are gone. I’m the village bailiff. I find culprits. And I have found ‘em.” He bared his rotten teeth in an ugly smile.
“We didn’t do anything!”
“Rubbish. Bring ‘em to me, say you’re sorry. Then I’ll ask Baron Bigge to make sure you’re not still alive when he buries you,” he grinned.
Farnes wasn’t so tall that his legs were out of reach. Perkis swung a hard kick at his shins. He shrieked and dropped the boys. They took off like bats out of the church belfry.
“You can run,” Farmer Farnes bawled (proving that he couldn’t), “but you can’t hide from the bailiff! Ow!!!” He hopped about, clutching his leg. “You’ve a week to admit it!”
Perkis and Finch kept running. They were late for work as well.
Like all serf children, they had toiled on the land from the age of five. Perkis didn’t mind hard work, but the green ground always brought him out in a frightening tingle. Then one day he was explaining to his friend Samson how to rehook a chain in the village ox’s moulbard plough. Old Samson, who made the chains, overheard him. Next thing, Perkis found himself in a hut at the end of the field fixing all the chains, harrows and scythes Old Samson had made badly. People soon asked Perkis how to maintain their other machines. These people brought other people’s questions, and the job acquired a new title: technical support. Rescued from green pastures, Perkis recruited Finch to sit with him. It’s easy, he said – just tell them to switch off the plough, then switch it on again.
Easy or not, they still had to turn up. Today, thanks to Farmer Farnes, they were late.
“Where have you been?” Old Samson asked.
“Dodging Farmer Farnes. He thinks we’ve been digging up bodies!” Perkis realised he was offended at the idea. It was ridiculous.
“I made his ploughs,” Old Samson mused. This was no surprise. He made everyone’s ploughs. “He’s worse than a Frenchman.”
The boys waited, but Old Samson left the hut without another word. They got to work fixing chains and answering serfs’ questions. Nobody had taught them how to help. Old Samson admitted that people might be cheered up just by having somewhere they could go to ask things. Even if the answers weren’t much use.
As word of their second job spread, plenty of questions came that afternoon.
“What’s a giant’s house like?” Answer: “Big.”
“Do you get to eat their food?” Answer: “No.”
“Are you going to tug their nose hairs really, really hard on purpose, so they wail in pain, tears stream down their big mean cheeks, and they howl until the walls shake?” Answer: “Well…”
Auntie Stan came by. “You be careful,” she warned. “The Plague killed many of us, but noblemen have finished off plenty too.”
Late in the day, a freckled girl with harvest-brown hair tied in flax approached Perkis. He had never seen her before.
“Can I speak to the boss?” she asked in a strange accent. “About this nose job or something?”
“Our boss is a giant,” he replied. “What do you want?”
“I’m looking for extra work,” she said. “Do you need any help?”
“What’s your name?”
“Adora,” she replied.
Her hazel eyes sparkled. Perkis wondered if he could get her to take over. John Kent would never allow it. “We don’t hire girls,” he replied.
“Why not?”
Perkis decided to blame an Old. “Old Finch said so. Didn’t he, Finch?”
“Probably,” Finch grumbled. “He says loads of things.”
“Sorry,” Perkis said. Adora said her family had come down from the north. She liked cooking but there were no kitchen jobs going. She was chatty, and didn’t complain when Perkis refused to talk about nose-plumbing yet again.
John Kent regularly provided customers each morning. Filling bucket after bucket with green bogeys made Perkis feel sick. They found other surprises in the giants’ noses. Silk threads were stuck to a well-dressed squire’s bogey. A knight’s snot was shot through with chips of metal and specks of a mysterious black powder. And then there was old miser Salop. Salop hated paying tax to the Baron so much, he had stashed gold flecks up his nose. And he was so rich, he had forgotten about them! They swept the shiny flakes into their tunic pockets and smiled broadly at Salop afterwards.
Adora returned to the hut the following week. “You have to let me join,” she said. “I have to earn extra money.”
“We don’t earn extra money,” Perkis said. “Or if we do, we don’t keep it.”
“Do you even know what's involved?” Finch asked.
“I bet you’re going to make it sound like it’s only for boys. Never seen a girl get dirty in the fields? Or climb a tree?”
“You have to dodge the Plague.”
“Yuck. How have you not caught it? Or have you?” She took a step back, and peered at them.
“It comes from sneezes.”
“Everyone knows that.”
“We stop sneezes coming out. We scrape off anything that could grow into one.”
“Have you been up any ladies' noses? The Plague affects women, you know.”
Perkis and Finch didn’t need telling. Both missed their mums. They shook their heads.
“Think a noble lady will let you inside her head? She's more likely to powder her face with one of our peasant sheep.”
Finch sniggered. Perkis stifled a smirk. Adora was completely serious.
“You could double your market,” she went on. “Double the clients, double the sales. Think about it. I'll wait here if you like.”
Perkis and Finch looked at each other. They thought about it. Four and a half seconds later, the persistent, oddly convincing girl was welcomed onto the team of nose plumbers.
CHAPTER Five
Hands on his mighty hips, John Kent frowned at the team’s new recruit. “I can’t pay more,” he grumbled.
“Shall we get our manager involved?” Adora suggested. She couldn’t work out why the boys fell about laughing. Instead, Perkis asked John Kent to mention that they could now offer the giants’ wives a similar service to their husbands.
“Those who still have wives,” the giant replied. “We suffered too. We’re a lot like you. Only bigger. Not fair, is it. You serfs work hard. But we get all the benefits.”
He began to sniff. Perkis held his breath. He hadn’t planned on drowning in giant tears. John Kent cleared his throat, and got a grip. Perkis relaxed.
“However,” John Kent said. “I have invited a Doctor of Physic later today. With his blessing, our fame will spread far beyond the county, and across the land.”
Perkis had a bad feeling. Doctors worked for giants. They couldn’t be trusted. If you needed a medicinal potion, you went to old peasant women. Operation? The blacksmith took care of it.
“Preventing the Plague returning! Taking it in your bucket! Brilliant. By the way, Perkins, I’ve been meaning to ask. What do you do with it all?”
Perkis realised all eyes were on him. “Oh,” he said. “Nothing much.”
This was not strictly true. It wasn’t even unstrictly true. It wasn’t in the slightest bit true. But John Kent was
focused on the Doctor’s imminent arrival. He just nodded. Then the day’s first customer diverted him, and Perkis was off the hook.
Sidney Sussex was a suspicious bald old giant of few words. He had come with his wife. She looked no more promising. But Adora approached her and bowed.
“Gentle lady, would you consider the service yourself?”
Mrs Sussex had a flinty look in her eye. “If my Sidney wants his nose to be examined thus, that’s his lookout. I never heard the like.” She folded her huge arms and would not say another word about nose plumbers or anything else.
The boys returned from a dull journey up Sidney Sussex’s nose to find Adora miserable.
“Wouldn’t let you, would she?” Perkis said. “It’s hard persuading them to – ”
“If you’re going to say, ‘I bet you wish you were still in the fields, or back home with your mum,’ just don’t,” Adora blazed. “Nothing new happens in the fields. This is new. It’s exciting. It’s like you’ve invented something nobody’s ever done before.”
“Is it?” Perkis and Finch looked at each other. This was news to them.
“You’re…we’re going to be famous. Especially if he likes us.”
“Who?” Perkis asked.
“Nose plumbers, meet Doctor Andrew Lincoln,” John Kent announced.
Doctor Lincoln wore the small squarish black hat that marked him out as a Doctor. He was shorter than John Kent but his nose was absurdly elongated, the biggest they had seen. He was also extremely posh.
“Alderman Kent has recounted your interruption of his sneeze blah-blah-blah lacking as you do the benefits of an education blah-blah-blah the King's subjects great and small shall have cause to be grateful blah-blah…”
Doctor Lincoln blathered on. “That sentence is longer than his nose,” Finch whispered.
“…and with the Lord’s mercy, we could help to save many lives.” Finally he shut up, and bent down to get a closer look at them.
Perkis stared bravely into the Doctor’s piercing eyes. “We’ll be in and out before you even notice, sire!”
“Ha-hah!” cried Doctor Lincoln as if they had stumbled right into a trap. Which they had.
Everyone knew the story of Alton Towers (thus named as he had been tallest of all the serfs). Alton had broken some minor rule, so the evil Baron De’Ath (thankfully now long de’ad) ate him as a punishment. Doctor Lincoln was licking his lips just like Perkis always imagined Baron De’Ath did as he chewed up Alton Towers.