The Kingdom of Bones

THIRTY-EIGHT

As he spoke the words, Sebastian took a firm grip on Sayers’ upper arm and held him fast. Sayers looked at him in astonishment.

“Sebastian?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Don’t Sebastian me,” the onetime policeman said. “You thief under my roof.”

“I stole nothing from you!”

“You’d have ruined my good name if I’d let your crime stand,” Sebastian said, his voice rising to compete with the racket all around them. “And I’ve damn near ruined my own family with what it’s taken to cover for you. I’ll have back what you took, and I’ll have it right now.”

With that, he turned Sayers around and started to shove him through the crowd toward the doors.

In among all the gentlemen, Sebastian was aware that he stood out in his travel-creased suit and his dusty shoes. He’d barely slept in two days and was sustained on a fuel of strong black coffee and indignation. He’d spent the past twelve hours canvassing every midtown lodging house in the public register, until he found the one where Tom Sayers’ description was recognized. A fellow guest had directed him here. When the club’s servants had tried to deny him entry, the sheer force of his response had been even more persuasive than any threat that he’d made.

He’d walked in just as everyone had been moving from the bar into the ballroom. He’d spotted Sayers almost immediately, and pushed his way through to his side.

Sayers said, “Wait, Sebastian. Please.”

“So you can stay and watch the fight?” Sebastian said. “I don’t think so. Console yourself with the thought that it’ll be over before we reach the street. Can’t you hear what they’re all saying?”

“About what?”

“Those scars on the man’s right hand.”

Sayers looked back at Burwell. The big man’s hand and forearm were slightly misshapen. His hand was like a bag of walnuts with fingers, his forearm marked with a jagged scar of old lightning. It didn’t look like the kind of hand a man could fight with at all.

“Caught in a cartwheel and mangled,” Sebastian said. “The surgeon fixed his knuckles with plates of Monell metal. Everyone in this room seems to know it. Apart from his opponent.”

Sayers looked back again. The young man was limbering up by spreading his arms like a bird and stretching the muscles in his chest and shoulders. He had no idea of what he faced.

“That’s a disgrace,” Sayers said.

“It’s not your affair,” Sebastian said as the two opponents squared up. “I’m your only concern right now.”

They reached the ballroom’s double doors, but when Sebastian tried to open them, he couldn’t. Someone saw him trying and called out, “The doors are always barred for a contest.”

Sebastian spun around, dragging Sayers with him like an oversized errant child. He scanned over the heads of the roaring crowd, looking for another way out.

In the ring, the two men were circling each other. The young man tried a jab. Burwell blocked it and responded with an openhanded slap across the cheek. Then another.

“Fight like a man!” the younger man protested.

“Fight like a man,” Burwell mimicked, mocking him in a girlish voice, and slapped him again. The young man responded instantly with another jab, and this one took Burwell by surprise. It landed on his mouth, knocked his head back, and split his lip.

Sebastian spied a possible way out. It was through the dining rooms, and they’d have to go around the outside of the crowd to reach it. With a mutter of frustration, he jerked Sayers back into motion.

Burwell feinted twice and then smashed in a single right-handed blow to the young man’s face. That hand, that twisted log with its hidden freight of stainless steel, was like a sack of bolts on a side of meat. Sebastian was no expert, but even he could tell that the cheekbone had probably gone in that moment. The fight was as good as over, but the young man struggled on, almost blind with pain and weaving like a drunk while the other man continued to play with him.

But Sebastian had other concerns. As they moved, he leaned close to Sayers’ ear.

“Where have you stashed it?” he said. “And how much is missing?”

Burwell now had hold of the young man’s shirtfront and was slinging him from side to side, spinning him about and then releasing him to lose his balance and fall. The noise from the clubmen was deafening. It was hard to see over the heads of the crowd for what happened next, but it seemed that Burwell dropped to one knee, pinned the boy down with his left hand, and pounded on his face with the right until the referee finally stirred himself and intervened.

“Calm yourself,” Sayers said. “I still have most of it. You’ll have it back. There’s no need to handle me so.”

The man in the ring was now challenging the crowd. Without any warning, Sayers jerked his arm and freed it from Sebastian’s grip. In a second he was gone, diving in among the backs of the watching spectators.

Sebastian followed him into the sea of bodies, and immediately found himself thrown this way and that as the crowd raged. There was Sayers, a few feet ahead, bobbing his way toward the ring. What had looked like a move to escape was now beginning to look like something else.

Sayers was the bigger man, and more able to make his way. No one was letting Sebastian through.

Now Sayers was there in the middle of the room, ducking under the rope to enter the ring with a delighted-looking Henry Burwell.

“Oh no,” Sebastian said, and felt his heart dropping like a filled bucket down a well.

He saw Sayers throwing his coat over the rope. Sayers didn’t bother to roll up his sleeves. The young man’s friends had removed him from the ring and were appealing to those around them for a medical man, but all seemed to be more interested in urging on the new contender.

Most of them probably considered Sayers a fool. For a man to enter the ring without knowing what he faced was merely stupid. To be driven in by anger after witnessing the danger…well, such a man deserved whatever was coming to him.

“Come on, then,” Burwell called to Sayers, gleefully raising his voice above the noise of the crowd. His split lip had bled a little, but otherwise he was untouched. Even the wax on his mustache was still holding up. “Be a man. Avenge your friend.”

Sebastian couldn’t reach the ring. No one was prepared to yield his place. He stopped trying and stood, helplessly, watching the scenario unfold.

The same referee took charge, and the contest began. At first it looked to Sebastian as if Sayers was in for it, doomed to fall within the first minute. They squared up and he immediately took a couple of hard body blows.

Then it got worse. He punched, but he punched weakly. Burwell blocked him without trouble, slammed another into his side. Sayers backed off to regather himself, but it wasn’t looking good. The passage of time and the years of abuse must have taken their toll. Perversely, it seemed as if cleaning up had done him no good at all. The deadening effect of the booze must previously have worked in his favor.

Another ineffectual exchange, another retreat. Sayers had made a terrible mistake. The fight was no more than two minutes old and the ex-boxer was getting visibly groggy. His only chance of survival seemed to lie in staying back out of Burwell’s reach. The big man was getting annoyed; this was no good, all this chasing his opponent around the ring. The crowd was getting annoyed, too, and some of the clubmen were starting to boo and whistle.

Sebastian saw his chance and managed to get to the rope, from where he called Sayers’ name. Sayers seemed not to hear him. He wove and stumbled as Burwell shepherded him, crowding him back toward one of the corners where he’d be trapped. The smile had gone from Burwell’s face. This was one to be finished, as quickly and as cruelly as possible.

Sebastian tried to enter the ring, but more than one hand grabbed him and pulled him back. He heard cries of “Bad sport!” from those all around him.

Sayers was trapped in the corner, his balance going, his guard falling. He was an easy target. Burwell took aim. He let everyone see what he was doing. He drew his walnut-knuckled fist back beyond his shoulder and then let it fly with all his strength.

Sebastian could do nothing. Those who were holding him had let him go. He could make no difference now.

But something happened between the launching of the blow and its landing.

Sayers snapped upright. He leaned aside the exact distance required for the flying fist to pass harmlessly over his shoulder. Burwell’s knuckles plowed straight into the wooden pillar, splitting the skin that covered them and causing blood to fly out in a spray. He screamed in pain.

Sayers, his face now only inches from Burwell’s own, said loudly enough for all to hear, “And I’m not even his friend.”

The metal plates had embedded in the timber. Burwell could not pull his hand free without a risk of tearing it apart.

Sayers now set about him with a precision that was almost scientific. It took three blows to break Burwell’s nose, but with persistence it went. Sayers continued to snap Burwell’s head this way and that until, finally, the man’s hand worked itself free of the pillar and he staggered backward.

By some miracle, he did not fall. Sayers circled him as he stood there, arms hanging, body swaying, blood spattering down onto the wooden floor from a hand destroyed twice over. Then he put in one clean punch that dropped the big man where he stood. Once Burwell was down, he did not move.

Everyone cheered. The bully’s seconds ducked into the ring to deal with their fallen champion. Then the rope fell and the crowd surged forward. Sayers held up a hand, trying to make himself heard. Those immediately around him stopped to listen to their new hero. Others paid no attention.

Someone gave him his coat. He searched around inside it and brought out a postcard that Sebastian recognized as the fighter’s long-cherished picture of Louise Porter. He held it up for all to see.

They started to grow quiet.

It was after this that the real trouble started.