Fair Fight (33 page)

The journey lasted long enough that I began to feel nothing but tired and half frozen. The roads wound on, the cold crept in. I clutched the rabbit cloak about my throat. The only merry thing then was Henry’s whistle, which never lost its gaiety. Now the very jollity of the tune made the darkening skies seem the darker and the cold that much more biting. By the time we rattled into the cobbled yard of an inn I was aching with the jolting of the cart and sitting so long in the wind. The place smelt as though they had not cleaned out the stables for weeks.

‘We walk from here,’ Mrs Webber said.

‘Is it far?’ I did not like to let go my close embrace about myself and admit the cold.

‘It’s a fair walk, I’ll not say it ain’t. But someone must keep the horse.’

A man with a lantern in his hand – a groom, I supposed him – waved us toward the stables and walked beside the cart until we stopped where he directed. Then he reached up and took the reins from Henry. They spoke to each other but I did not attend to what they said; I was looking about myself at the shadows across the cobbles – which could have been any kind of filth – the utter blackness inside the stables where the light from the lantern did not reach. The man’s face was lit from below, throwing his eyes into shadow.

Mrs Webber’s hand pulled at my elbow and I made myself stand and scramble from the cart. I made a fumbling business of it, unable to keep my skirts straight and hitting my leg against the wheel.

‘Wake up, now, missy,’ the groom said.

I had forgotten until then that I was dressed so common. The inn itself looked low and mean. No one would know how I was to be treated.

He turned his back upon us and began unhitching our mare.

‘Come.’ Mrs Webber took my elbow and started my sleepy legs moving toward Henry. She set a quick pace and soon enough my blood warmed, though my feet stayed numb.

Once out of the yard, in the pitch-black lane, my spirits roused. The light of the inn was lost with the winding of the roads; I could barely see. The sky was a spangled dark grey above the black hedgerows; Henry and Mrs Webber were hooded silhouettes. Henry had fallen silent and the only sounds were our own breaths and the rustling of nocturnal creatures. I had never been so much part of the night. I felt like a bat, a spirit, a rogue. I understood what it might be, to be a witch.

We climbed over a stile, Henry giving me his hand, and crossed a field, my boots growing heavy with mud. Before we were halfway across I realised that the pale orange glow I had taken for a remnant of the sunset was flickers of firelight and flitting shadows. As we grew nearer the shadows turned to a mass of people, like dark trees swaying in the wind. Here and there a brazier was burning and then they became people again, grotesque in the firelight, all shadows and crimson skin. Pieces of conversation drifted out to our ears and were sucked back into the drone. Then we climbed over one more stile and became part of the crowd ourselves, a great gathering of savages. It seemed fantastical that a field should be transformed into this coven of cloaked figures. The link-torches and lanterns bobbing about the crowd made green spots come before my eyes when I looked away. I knew that if I lost sight of Henry and Mrs Webber I would be lost for ever. I stayed so close behind Mrs Webber that her cloak wound about my legs and when a man stepped between us, moving in the other direction, I reached out a panicked hand and grasped the cloth of it. She kept moving and I jerked her back. She turned in surprise and said, ‘Alright, I won’t lose you.’

Henry behind me was jostled so that he had to take hold of my shoulders in order to avoid being pressed too tightly against me. The people around us were hardly people at all. If I was knocked down none of them would notice; they would trample me where I lay. But of course, Henry and Mrs Webber would not let that happen.

Then we came to the heart of the crowd, where a string had been tied to stakes pushed into the earth. The people came right up to the string like sheep jostling a fence. It was not strung tightly and undulated against the legs of those at the front, as those behind pushed forward. There were lanterns hung on iron poles and more braziers, each with a knot of people gathered close enough almost to burn.

Mrs Webber led us so close that we could not help but sway and shuffle as others pushed past us. I found I could see again; we had entered a circle of yellow lantern-light. My view of the ring – the space that was to be the ring – opened and closed with the movements of the crowd.

Henry was grinning like a boy at the circus.

Mrs Webber jabbed her elbow into my side and said, ‘Give us a sixpence.’

I dug about in my reticule and found a shilling. She disappeared into the crowd, but now, with Henry beside me and in the circle of light, I let her go.
Henry
, I thought,
will keep me safe, and in any case, she is sure to come back
. I remembered that I had not trusted him to look after me at the fair. I had been so ignorant, then.

Mrs Webber did return to us, coming from the opposite direction to the one I had expected and holding a small bottle. She pushed it into my hands and I put it to my lips obediently. It was sharp as sucking on a lemon and burnt like lit coals. Tears sprang to my eyes and I buried my face in my shoulder to cough; I could not help it. I felt Mrs Webber lift the bottle from my fingers. My throat felt as though I had hung my head over the fireplace.

‘Rag-water,’ Mrs Webber said. ‘Warms the blood.’

She took a long swallow, gasped aloud and handed Henry the bottle. He coughed almost as badly as I had done.

A hot fist had clenched in my stomach and now spread rays of heat out to touch my limbs. I began to look about myself with great interest, and well I might have, for it was then that four women came into the ring; the two fighters and their seconds.

The first woman – built like a washerwoman, with thick arms and wrists – shrugged off her cloak. I felt a shock go through me like a dash of cold water. She was bare to the waist. Her bosom hung like ripe pears, catching in the yellow light. The other woman was as bare as the first. Hers were smaller and more like my own, but closer together.
Are mine far apart
, I found myself thinking,
or are hers near?
They must have been unbearably chilled; I felt my own bosom shrivel in sympathy. I had never seen another woman stripped bare before. I forgot, in the shock of it, that they were to fight.

I saw how Mrs Webber and Henry were watching me; he apprehensively and she with a look of great amusement.

‘I give you my word, Mrs Dryer, I’d no notion they’d be like this,’ Henry said.

‘Well, no more did I,’ Mrs Webber said, ‘but you mustn’t mind it. Girls do fight with their dugs out, sometimes.’

‘Do you?’ I could not help but ask.

‘No, not I,’ she said. ‘Not unless the pay’s handsomer than what these wretches will have.’ She laughed so that I could not tell if she were speaking truthfully.

The women closed in on each other and the crowd hushed. I was watching the smaller of the two. Her shoulders were tensed, but at the call of ‘time’ she seemed to drop them in a sigh before she leapt upon her opponent.
Here we are, then
, her face seemed to say,
and I had better get on with it.
They fell upon each other in a grappling, clawing manner much different to the strike-and-defence that Mrs Webber practised. The larger woman would not let the smaller go and the crowd was not pleased; she seemed to want to crush her, rather than exchange earnest blows. They swung together in a desperate dance while all about us the cries rose.

‘Have at it honest!’

‘Ah, you big fussock! Give the girl her arms!’

The larger woman threw the smaller to the floor with a force that I thought would break her neck; the crowd screamed in savage joy. The smaller one scrambled to her feet as though she expected to be kicked while she lay upon the floor. The large woman’s breast heaved and her bosoms swung like bags of meat.

The next round began; now the smaller knew what the other might try and would not get close enough to allow it. They began to circle each other with their fists raised. I felt myself rise up onto my toes as though I were with them. When at last they began to swing at each other I moved and gasped with every blow.

Watching that fight was an entirely different experience to the fair. I was not afraid, or at least not much, of the crowd about me. I did not imagine that one woman would kill another. The most marked change was that I could see, now, what each fighter did. Not all the time – they moved so quickly – but here and there, I thought,
Yes, she moves to block
, or,
Now she will go for the left side
.

The smaller woman was too slow. It infuriated me.

I believe I called aloud, ‘Be quick! Oh, be quick!’

She dealt the large woman a blow and then waited too long before skipping away. She would be caught any moment, I knew. As soon as she made a skewed blow, missing her opponent’s face and striking her shoulder, the other woman grabbed her as a hawk grabs a mouse, and they were back to their grappling embrace.

I looked to Mrs Webber, but she was looking past me at a girl of about my own size, wearing a brown wool cloak and with a harelip like a knife-slash from lip to nose.

‘I seen you, you nibblish bitch,’ Mrs Webber said. ‘You were like to foist my cousin here.’ Her voice was harsher than I had ever heard it.

‘I’ll say you never.’ The harelip twisted further into a snarl.

I looked from one to the other and put my hand to my throat.

‘I tell you I seen you, witch.’ Mrs Webber put a hand on my arm, protectively.

‘What?’ I said. ‘What was she doing?’

‘She was readying to pick your pocket, except I saw her first.’

‘Oh, muddy slander,’ the harelipped girl said. ‘I should give you a slap.’

Another girl, with great dark circles around her eyes, appeared beside her. I felt Mrs Webber’s shoulder come against mine.

Henry was smiling to see us quarrelling. All about us, in fact, people were turning to watch as though our disagreement were as exciting as the action in the ring.

‘Don’t you call my chum a prig,’ the sickly-looking girl said directly to me.

‘I’ve not called either one of you anything at all,’ I said.

‘Hark how she talks!’ the sickly girl said. ‘Like a lady. You’ve come down a way, ain’t you?’

Both girls laughed.

‘It’ll be you down if you don’t hush your lip,’ Mrs Webber said. She nudged me, ‘Fib her one.’

‘What?’ My voice was weak.

‘Slap her,’ Mrs Webber said. ‘I’ll be with you.’

‘Set to,’ someone behind me called out, and the cry was taken up by other voices all about us.

‘Set to, then!’

‘Let’s see you go at it!’

‘Go on, Mrs D,’ Henry called out.

I began to say, I cannot, but the sickly girl shot her hand out as fast as a snake and grabbed me by my hair. It was astonishingly painful; my body shrivelled and pulled upwards as though all of my limbs hung on puppet strings from the roots of my hair. More surprising than this was that even while part of my mind cried out –
Stop, stop!
– another part whispered,
Move into her hand
.
I thrust my head up into her fingers and the pull loosened. Then I thought,
If I hit her now, while she has hold of my hair, she will pull me down
.
I could not think what to do, so desperate was I then to make her let go. I chopped my hand at her arm with all my might. Pure luck – for I had not the foresight to aim for it – drove my blow into the inside of her elbow, forcing her arm to jerk closed. Her grip stayed strong enough that, although she let go, some of my hair went with her. It was a hot pain entirely unlike being struck. I felt myself filled with outrage, laid over with fear. I hit her as hard as I could, and felt my knuckles jar against her cheek. Then my eye exploded in white light.

At the time, it seemed to me that I should never be allowed to stop fighting, although Henry said afterward that it lasted only moments. It had been the harelipped girl whose fist had given my eye such a blow, after which Mrs Webber had struck her so hard as to knock her quite dazed, and had pulled me away from my sickly assailant.

‘You weren’t doing badly,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t like to leave it too long.’

I had been quite giddy from the excitement while the quarrel lasted, but huddled in the back of the dogcart travelling home, I was only injured, exhausted and terribly cold. I managed to smile but even moving my lips hurt.

‘I think you did right.’ My voice was cracked as though it, too, had taken a beating.

‘Next time you’ll hit her before she gets hold of your head,’ Mrs Webber said.

‘Don’t,’ I said, for laughing was like sharp fingers in my ribs.

‘Well then, next time, shall I find you a smaller one? Only I thought you were well matched, there.’

I stared at her.

‘You didn’t think I caught her with her hand in your purse, did you?’ she said. ‘My days, Mrs Dryer, the sharpers there are like rats; too quick to catch, and as common. No, I just thought, it ain’t really a mill till it’s a mill, if you catch my meaning. Thought you’d be getting sick of the dummy.’

‘I might have been hurt,’ I said.

‘I was there, wasn’t I? Did I let you come to harm? Besides a bit of your hair being out, I mean.’

‘I suppose not.’ Most ladies would be hard put to think of something worse than losing a handful of their hair.

‘There we are, then.’

Ahead of us, on the cart-seat, Henry began to whistle a tune so pretty, and so strangely sad, that we both fell silent to listen.

I could not stop touching the tender part of my scalp. In one patch my hair was half pulled-out and where it remained it looked as ragged and sorry for itself as an invalid’s. I could not smooth it, the roots seemed to cry out. I was glad that I had taken to wearing my hair inside a cap instead of having it dressed. Glad, too, that I was so proficient in the use of paint. There was a small purple-grey patch upon my cheek bone and a long scratch along my jaw but they disappeared well enough under the layer of white. I kept my gloves on, but there was nothing unusual in that. I painted up so convincingly that, surveying myself in the long glass, I felt a little disconsolate that I did not appear more changed. I was changed; I felt it in every ache of my limbs.