The Hellfire Conspiracy

24

We arrived in Cheney street in scarce enough time to begin the match. I was still anxious to conclude my personal matter against Clay, but the combination of Ona Bellovich’s disappearance and the bullet that had grazed me was giving me a headache. I wanted to get the fight over with once and for all, even if I took a drubbing.

The German Gymnasium in King’s Cross was the cleanest athletic building I had ever seen. Where was that stale odor of male perspiration, wet towels, and old leather one always found in such establishments? Leave it to the Germans to replace it with bleach and carbolic.

Our fight, I would even say our feud, was not publicized; but a number of men had come to see the match anyway, perhaps a result of Clay’s bragging. Though this was an establishment for amateurs and betting was forbidden, it was not difficult to spot the bet takers in the audience.

In the dressing room, I found that Barker had provided an outfit for me: a pair of silk drawers in black, a white cotton singlet, and a pair of rubber gymnasium shoes. Only the gloves were old.

“The softer they are, the harder they’ll feel against Clay’s face when you put them there,” Barker explained.

“I-I don’t know what to say. Thank you, sir.”

Barker shrugged it off. Being thanked always made him uncomfortable. “We can’t have you in shabby togs. It makes the agency look second-rate.”

I felt more confident once I’d changed. Looking at myself in a full-length mirror, I could say I looked like a boxer, if only a bantamweight. I was clean-limbed, with no fat on my frame; and almost two years of training under Barker had packed a layer of muscle across my arms and chest. I was in the best physical condition I had ever been, and I prayed it would be enough.

Stepping into the ring, I began to warm up, trying to project an air of confidence. I wanted the anonymous men standing about to think I was a serious fighter, because if they were confident, perhaps it might rub off on me. Though it was far too late to say it, particularly after I’d wished so hard for this fight, I was beginning to have my doubts.

Clay came in just then, looking as superior as ever. I noticed he’d put on a stone or two since I’d known him at university, and he showed signs of dissipation. Too many rich meals, late-night drinking bouts, and keeping up with the needs of two women told in his somewhat baggy eyes and slight paunch. I’d like to say we were evenly matched, but his arms were still much longer than mine, and his many supporters in the audience told me that he still boxed here.

This was no prizefight and there was little fanfare once we entered the ring. The referee-a short, pugnacious-looking older man with side-whiskers and a truculent manner-called us together brusquely. He looked familiar, and then I realized why. Our referee was the Marquis of Queensberry himself, creator of the famous rules of boxing. He had to be a crony of Lord Hesketh, I wagered. I looked through the crowd and saw his lordship smoking a cigar at the back, speaking with a haughty fellow with curling hair and a patrician nose. The marquis told us he expected a fair fight, and we agreed and went to our corners. Cyrus Barker was in mine, I was glad to see, with a stool, a towel, and a bottle of water. He stood behind the post in his shirtsleeves, though he still looked dapper in his waistcoat. When I reached him, he turned me and whispered last-minute instructions.

“Remember, lad, let him come to you. Change positions often, left to right. Stay on the balls of your feet, and when you hit, hit cleanly and put your shoulder behind it. Throw off any clinches. Go, and Godspeed.”

At the bell, I dashed out of my corner. Clay took advantage of his longer reach early, jabbing first and following up with solid punches. I danced out of the way of most and caught him a jab once or twice. He gave me one full in the stomach; but in the next clinch, I caught him a good one in the ribs. We began to sweat though we were scarcely a minute into the fight.

“I’ll see you in the gutter yet,” he muttered under his breath.

“Only if you’re looking up,” I told him.

At that moment, I would have given even odds, but I was being optimistic. He hooked me suddenly, catching me on the side of the chin, and I felt something give in the back of my head. I still battled it out, but I felt wobbly and there was a ringing in my ears.

I switched positions, leading with my right fist, but I couldn’t remember all the things Barker had told me. I couldn’t possibly lose, I told myself as we pummeled each other with a flurry of ineffectual blows. It wouldn’t be fair or just. But as Barker has told me on numerous occasions, don’t expect fairness or justice on this side of the grave; that is what the other side is for.

Clay kept poking me with his long stinging left, but it was slowing. I batted it out of the way several times; but whenever I stepped under it for a volley of my own, there was his right, quicker and more lethal, a coiled serpent waiting to strike.

The bell sounded, and Barker shoved the stool between the ropes. I could hardly believe that only three minutes had sped by. I’d gotten in only one really clean punch, yet I had fared well enough. However, when I moved my head, I felt as if there were gravel in the base of my skull. All the while, Barker was issuing more instructions in my ear.

“Don’t telegraph your punches, lad. He can see them coming. Fire them off cleanly. When you get under his guard, hook him or give him the uppercut.”

“His right, sir,” I said, gasping for air. “It’s good.”

“Redirect it, then. Take it on the shoulder or the elbow. Then go for his stomach. Keep dancing; you’ll soon wear him out. You’re in better condition than he. Don’t swallow this.”

He put the bottle to my mouth. I swirled the water about and spat it over the ropes. Then the bell rang and I charged in again.

Palmister Clay was more confident now on the strength of the one good punch he’d gotten to my chin. I, on the other hand, was determined to shorten the odds, so there was a furious exchange of punches that we each absorbed. It was a typical amateur bout, two young men trying to prove themselves, throwing punches that landed nowhere. That is, until near the end of the round when I stepped under and gave him a smart uppercut that everyone saw. Though Clay was not rocked by it, there was an appreciative sound from the crowd.

Then disaster struck. Clay got in another jab, and when I blocked it, he came in with a right that opened up my left brow. A split brow is the end of many a fight, and I feared this was going to be one of them. Clay was the first to draw blood. Suddenly, the audience, the same men who had been cheering me on not a minute before, became a pack of baying hounds. I was now their prey.

My opponent redoubled his efforts, but I was more inconvenienced by the trickle of blood than harmed. I began an assault of my own to show him how much fight he was still facing when the bell rang again.

There were no instructions this time. A doctor climbed up into my corner and applied a hasty sticking plaster, while Barker pinched the cut to staunch the blood. My heart was pumping too hard to notice or care about the pain. I kept telling myself that this was for Jenny. Barker was mopping my face as the bell rang, and I launched out into the ring again.

Something was different about this round. My arms and legs felt sluggish, as if weights had been attached to them, and I was dizzy. Blast it, it was only a little cut. The one I had from Miacca’s bullet was longer. I launched a hook at Clay’s odious head, but he parried it easily, and his first jab knocked the new plaster off. What blood was not going down into my eye, I actually saw spraying outward in droplets. The next I knew I was against the ropes, he was assaulting my stomach, and I could do little to prevent him beyond guarding my head with my forearms. I felt my knees buckle and saw the marquis waving Clay away. He was counting me out, but it sounded like he was in the next room. I’ve been called pigheaded before, and that day was no exception. I pushed myself back onto my legs and lurched toward him again. I planned to get him with a classic combination of jab-jab-punch, when suddenly Clay’s glove came over mine and downward, a kind of reverse uppercut that landed on my chin. The next I knew, I was flat on the canvas, my head ringing. Cheers went up, and there was scattered applause. Clay had won. As it turned out, I hadn’t even been conscious during the ten count. The marquis held Clay’s arm aloft while his father, Lord Hesketh, climbed into the ring, a satisfied smirk on his face. Barker lifted me up by the shoulders and seated me on the stool a final time.

So that was it, I thought. I’d lost. There would be no punishment for what Palmister Clay had done to Jenny and me, no retribution for the final days we never had together, as she choked out her life in a dilapidated tenement. The knowledge was as bitter and caustic as a draught from the Lake of Fire itself.

Barker and the physician crowded over me, blocking my vision of Clay’s triumph. I felt the tug of the needle and thread as my brow was stitched. The ring was full of gentlemen, standing about discussing the match dispassionately, as if I weren’t there. I wanted to crawl off somewhere and die. I wanted to go home and lick my wounds, not to the warehouse, not even to my room in Newington, but to Wales.

“Gentlemen!” Barker’s voice bellowed above me. I lifted my head as best I could and looked at him. He had stepped up on the outside of the corner, a foot on either side of the pole, his knees balanced against the ropes. “Gentlemen! A challenge! We demand a rematch!”

I looked at the crowd in front of me. Everyone was looking at the Guv as if he were out of his mind. I had just been outclassed, and handily. To put us together in the ring a second time seemed superfluous. The better man had already proven himself.

“What is your challenge?” Hesketh demanded. “That your boy here shall stand within the next half hour?”

That brought a rough chuckle from the crowd. I must have been a sight. Momentarily, I wanted a mirror, then thought better of it.

“I demand a rematch, sir,” Barker growled. “And I shall cover all bets myself.”