“By Christ, I’ll see you both hanged for this!” The outburst came from the tail-coated passenger, who was still cradling his stricken wife. Beside him, the parson, grey-faced, had dropped to his knees in the mire. Whether at the shock of hearing the Lord’s name being taken in vain or in order to be sick, it was not immediately apparent.
The threat was ignored by the highwayman, who continued to ransack the corpse, his actions becoming more frantic as each pocket was inspected and pronounced empty. Finally, he threw his silent accomplice a wide-eyed look. “He was right, God rot him! There ain’t no bleedin’ key!”
In desperation, he turned his attention to the dispatch pouch. His hands traced the metal straps and the padlock that secured them.
Finding access to the pouch beyond his means, the highwayman examined the chain and bracelet. They were as solid and as unyielding as a convict’s manacle. He rattled the links violently. The dead man’s arm rose and flopped with each frenzied tug.
“Christ on a cross!” The highwayman threw the chain aside and rose to his feet. In a brutal display of anger, he lifted his foot and scythed a kick at the dead man’s head. The sound of boot crunching against bone was sickeningly loud. “Bastard!”
He stepped away, breathing heavily, and regarded the body for several seconds.
It was then that he felt the vibrations through the soles of his boots.
Hoofbeats. Horsemen, approaching at the gallop.
“Jesus!” The highwayman spun, panic in his voice. “It’s the Redbreasts! It’s a bloody patrol!” He stared at his companion. An unspoken message passed between them. The highwayman turned back and stood over the sprawled body. He reached inside his riding coat.
In a move that was surprisingly swift, he drew the sword from the scabbard at his waist. Raising it above his head, he slashed downwards. It was a heavy sword, short and straight-bladed. The blade bit into the pale wrist with the force of an axe cleaving into a sapling. He tugged the weapon free and swung it again, severing the hand from the forearm. Sheathing the sword, the highwayman bent down and drew the bracelet over the bloody stump. He turned and held the dispatch pouch aloft, the glow of triumph in his eyes.
As if it were an omen, the sky was suddenly lit by a streak of lightning and an ear-splitting crack of thunder shattered the night. The storm had turned. It was moving back towards them.
Meanwhile, from the direction of the lower road, beyond the trees, the sound of riders could be heard, approaching fast.
The highwayman tossed the dispatch pouch to his accomplice, who caught it deftly. Then, stuffing his pistol into its holster and snatching the satchel containing the night’s takings from the startled coachman, he sprinted for his horse. Such was his haste that his foot slipped in the stirrup and he almost fell. With a snarl of vexation, the highwayman hauled himself awkwardly into the saddle and his accomplice passed him the reins.
Rain began to patter down, striking leaves and puddles with increasing force as the highwayman and his still mute companion turned their horses around. The sound of hooves was clearly audible now, heralding the imminent arrival of the patrol; perhaps a dozen horsemen or more.
The two riders needed no further urging. Wheeling their horses about, digging spurred heels into muscled flanks, they were gone. Within seconds, or so it seemed to the bewildered occupants of the coach, swallowed up by the night, the sound of their hoofbeats fading into the darkness beyond the moving curtain of rain.
It had quickly become clear to the crowd gathered in the stable yard behind the Blind Fiddler tavern that the Cornishman, Reuben Benbow, the younger of the two fighters, was far more accomplished than his opponent. The local man, Jack Figg, was heavier built and by that reckoning, a good deal stronger, but there was little doubt among those watching that Figg did not have anything to match his opponent’s agility.
The Cornishman was tall, six feet of honed muscle, with features still relatively unscathed. Having served his apprenticeship in fairground booths the length and breadth of his home county, he had been taken under the protective wing of Jethro Ward, the West Country’s finest pugilist. Under Ward’s diligent tutelage, Benbow was fast gaining a reputation as a doughty, if not ruthless, fighter.
Jack Figg, on the other hand, was square built with a face that betrayed the legacy of half a lifetime in the bare-knuckle game. A stockman by trade, it was said that in his youth Figg could stun a bullock senseless with one blow of his mighty fist, and that he had once sparred with the great Tom Cribb. But now Figg was past his prime. His body bore the scars of more than seventy bouts.
The opening seconds of the new round were an indication that Figg was continuing with the close-quarter approach; a technique to be expected. Only too aware that he was slower and less nimble than his opponent, he was attempting to exploit his size and strength by grappling his man into submission. The rules of the fight game were simple and few: no hitting an adversary below the waist. Any other tactics that might be employed were considered perfectly acceptable, even if it meant breaking your opponent’s back across your knee.
Benbow, however, had been well coached and was wise to the older man’s game. He knew if he could keep out of Figg’s reach he would eventually tire out his opponent. There was no knowing how long a fight could last – forty, fifty, perhaps as many as sixty rounds – which meant the fitter man would inevitably prevail. The majority of bouts were decided not by knockout but by the loser’s exhaustion. Besides, full blows often led to shattered knuckles and dislocated forearms and as the hands became swollen so they began to lose their cutting power. Much better to wear away your opponent’s defences with short jabs. In any case, a quick finish would certainly displease the crowd.
The afternoon bout had attracted several hundred spectators. Workers from the timber yards rubbed shoulders with Smithfield porters, while Shoe Lane apprentices jostled for space with ostlers from the nearby public houses. The latter formed the rowdiest contingent, heckling the Cornishman mercilessly, protesting vigorously whenever Figg received what was perceived to be a foul blow, and cheering wildly on the occasions their hero managed to retaliate.
There were other, more respectably dressed onlookers: square-riggers, toffs and dandies who’d forsaken their own haunts among the fashionable clubs of Pall Mall and St James’s in order to savour the delights offered by the less salubrious parts of the capital. Enticed by the flash houses with their cheap whores who were only too eager to accept a coin in exchange for a quick fumble in a dark alleyway or in some rat-infested lodging house, a prizefight and the lure of a wager were added attractions. Dotted around were several men in uniform, a smattering of army officers and a raucous group of blue-jackets on shore leave from the Pool.
Hawkers and pedlars moved among the crowd, while at the edge of the throng, beneath the cloisters, mothers suckled infants, and snot-nosed children crawled on hands and knees between the legs of the adults, oblivious to the filth that coated the cobblestones. A tribe of limbless beggars masquerading as wounded veterans appealed for alms, while beside them drunks sprawled comatose in the gutter. In one corner of the yard a mullet-faced individual with the staring gaze of the fanatic teetered on a wooden box and railed vexedly against the sins of the flesh and the evils of gambling.
Prizefighting was unlawful. So around the perimeter of the yard lookouts patrolled the entrances and alleyways, ready to warn the fighters and spectators of the arrival of the constables. Were a warning to be given, the ring would be dismantled within minutes, leaving the fighters and their promoters to melt into the crowd.
There were other parties in attendance, too, interested in neither prizefight nor preacher. These were creatures of a different kind, opportunists drawn by the whiff of rich pickings, thieves of the street.
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