The Bear Pit

by S. G. MacLean

  Thomas Faithly was already there, engaged in a game of English hazard with an ancient fellow who looked as grizzled and knotted as an old log just washed up on the Bankside shore. Lawrence could see from the doorway that the fellow was cheating, a third die slipping from his cuff when required. He wondered that Thomas Faithly didn’t also see it, but then he thought that maybe he did.

  Thomas looked up as the door creaked closed behind Lawrence. ‘Ah, my good friend! And in the nick of time to save me from this gentleman who would have every penny from my purse!’ The ‘gentleman’ gave Lawrence a black-toothed smile, which Lawrence did not return. No point in him and Thomas Faithly both looking like they were asking to be taken for idiots. He went over and stood by the table. ‘Come on, Sir Thomas, we’ve business to see to.’

  ‘Another jug of sack, for the love of God, Lawrence, and then I am at your command.’ He turned to his gaming partner. ‘My man here is the very Devil when it comes to the dice or a hand of cards, he has no understanding of the skill, you see. He thinks nothing worth chancing a shilling on unless it has four legs and a set of teeth that would shred your innards – although he’ll look at a cockfight at a push.’

  Lawrence stepped forward and planted a hand on Thomas’s shoulder. ‘Now, Sir Thomas, you know the major-generals have put an end to all that sort of thing. Is that not right, friend?’ he added, giving the old dicing cheat a meaningful look.

  The old man echoed his look. ‘Aye. None of that on Bankside now, may God bless the Lord Protector.’

  ‘It’s a pity, all the same,’ slurred Sir Thomas. Lawrence knew he was not as drunk as he pretended to be, but he doubted the old fellow would spot it. ‘I used to love to watch a good dog. Do you remember my Brutus, Lawrence?’

  Lawrence put on a smile. ‘Aye, fat old thing. Take down a boar though, if he’d a mind.’

  ‘Best dog I ever had,’ said Thomas. He leaned across the table towards his recent adversary. ‘Lost him. Marston Moor.’

  Lawrence picked up Sir Thomas’s hat and handed it to him. ‘Lost a lot more than that. Now come on, we’ve places to be.’

  Thomas was making a show of getting up reluctantly from the table, when the old fellow placed a firm hand on his wrist, all the while looking at the heavy purse Lawrence had relieved his master of. ‘I can get you a dog. A good dog.’

  Thomas made to sit down again, but Lawrence said, ‘Sir Thomas isn’t interested in your half-bred curs.’

  The man shook his head, leaned closer still. Lawrence didn’t envy Thomas the reek of rotting breath and Bankside filth he must now be being subjected to. ‘No, proper dogs. Bred from the old mastiffs from the baiting.’

  Lawrence leaned in. ‘The ones that fought the bulls, you mean?’

  The man lowered his voice, looked around him as if Colonel Pride himself might be listening in a corner. ‘Not just the bulls.’

  ‘Do you mean the ones that baited the bears?’ Thomas had now let drop his drunken act. Lawrence saw that the old fellow understood it had all been a game in the first place. Just a game with different rules from the ones with dice, or cards, or peas under a shell. The man nodded.

  Lawrence shook his head. ‘No. They were all shipped off to Jamaica when the Bear Garden was closed down.’

  ‘Aye, but not before some of them had whelped.’ The man looked again at the purse. ‘Cost you, mind.’

  Thomas slowly turned his hand to grip the old man’s wrist. ‘I’ll not be done. I know my money and my man here knows dogs.’

  ‘You won’t be done, your Lordship,’ said the man, essaying one brief attempt to release his wrist from Thomas’s grip before giving it up. ‘You’ll want one of these dogs when you see them, I promise you.’

  Thomas held the man’s wrist a moment longer then nodded and let it fall. ‘All right then.’

  Less than two minutes later they were out in Dead Man’s Place once more, all three of them. Lawrence kept a tight grip on the handle of his dagger and hoped Thomas Faithly was as able a swordsman as North Riding rumour had told. There might be time for the pair of pistols Sir Thomas wore concealed beneath his cloak, but Lawrence doubted it. They went further down the alley, away from the river, then turned sharply to the right. More turns, ever narrower passageways, wooden boards crossing open pools of water, and Lawrence had soon lost his bearings, but Thomas, at least, had the air of one who had been here before.

  *

  ‘Not there then?’ Thomas had asked as they’d passed behind the site of the Bear Garden.

  Their guide had spat and shaken his head. ‘Rubble now. Builder has it. Galleries long burned for firewood. What’s the use of building places for people to live, if you take away all of life’s pleasures, eh?’

  ‘What did they do with the kennels?’ Lawrence asked. ‘Burn them for wood too?’

  The man laughed, a dry sound from the side of his throat. ‘Don’t know nothing about kennels. Not there. Cages, though. Sold on somewhere.’

  ‘And the bears?’

  ‘All shot.’

  ‘Aye, so I’ve heard. But where were they kept?’

  The man stopped, as if to consider, then shrugged. ‘Dunno. Where would you keep a bear?’

  They carried no lantern, yet their guide negotiated with ease the walkways around the pools of Thames water amongst the gardens of Bankside. He did not as much pause nor glance to the side as they passed by the wall of the property in which Thomas and Seeker had only a week since made their gruesome discovery of Joseph Grindle’s body. Just past it they forked to the left and Thomas became aware of the water leaching from the ground at either side of their path. They were on Lambeth Marsh.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Lawrence murmured just behind him.

  ‘Nor I.’ Thomas stopped. ‘You!’ he called to the man. ‘Far enough. Where are these dogs?’

  ‘Yet a little further, master,’ said the man, pointing up ahead of him. ‘There.’ Thomas could just make out the outline of some sort of enclosure or assortment of buildings, from which a solitary twist of smoke wound upwards into the night sky. He nodded, and passed a hand beneath his cloak to take hold of one of his pistols.

  As they drew nearer to the enclosure, Thomas began to see the occasional glow of light further back on the marsh, towards the river and Lambeth, the odd rag-tag of cottages or lone houses, as if their occupants had turned their backs on the world.

  The path by which they approached the high-walled enclosure was narrow and irregular, and ended in a small wooden door set into the wall. Long before they reached it such a barking had set up that Thomas would have given up any thought of examining the creatures making it, had not his purpose been getting to the owner of those dogs. Loud curses and the sound of a leather leash whipping swiftly through the night air were followed by a yelp, then a whimper, then silence.

  At a series of knocks the small wooden door was opened to them. Their guide went in untroubled, but both Thomas and Lawrence had to stoop. When they straightened up again it was to be confronted by a man twice the size of their guide and a head taller than either of them. His chest alone was broad enough for two men. A pelt, Thomas thought, and the fellow might have passed for a bear himself.

  A short exchange between guide and guard ensued. ‘Have they money?’ Thomas heard the giant say. The answer in the affirmative was followed by a swift body search that soon relieved Thomas of his sword and his pistols, but not, to his surprise, his purse. Almost as surprising was the failure of the search of Lawrence to turn up any weapon at all, when Thomas knew for a certainty that his companion was carrying a knife.

  ‘You’ll get these back when you leave,’ the man growled, throwing down Thomas’s weapons and powder flasks on the lid of a water butt near the door. Thomas tried not to imagine the damage that would be done to his powder, or indeed to his fine new flintlock pistols should the lid of the water butt choose to give wa
y beneath them.

  ‘Glad to hear there’s a chance of us leaving,’ Lawrence muttered as their guide disappeared back out of the door and onto the marsh again.

  The place stank. It was a stink beyond the usual stink of London, which had receded the further from the city they got. Beyond the different, dangerous miasma of Southwark too, overlaid as it was with all the pulsating potential of human sin. This place stank of dog piss, and shit and fear. Like a field hospital, or one of the prisons Cromwell had had packed with taken Royalists. Thomas felt an old nausea rising within him. ‘What kind of beast can be kept in a place like this?’ he asked.

  ‘One that will kill,’ said the kennel master. ‘That’s what you’re here for, after all, isn’t it? Let us not pretend you didn’t understand what you were coming to.’

  ‘And for that you keep them in filth?’ Lawrence’s voice registered as much disgust as Thomas felt.

  The kennel master stopped, and turned around to loom over them. ‘This is not the place to find a lady’s lapdog, nor the season to waste my time.’

  ‘We’re not here to waste your time,’ said Lawrence, in a tone that cut by a couple of inches at least the difference in height between them, ‘but I have my doubts what manner of sorry specimen can be kept in a condition like this. Sir Thomas has no mind for a sickly runt, nor I the humour to nurse it.’

  The man simply laughed and continued on ahead of them. A growling then a barking set up again, and this time he did nothing to quiet it. At the far end of the yard was a palisade of brick, broken at intervals, floor to ceiling, by sets of iron bars. The barking grew and became frantic the closer they got to the cage. Such was the leaping and tussling from inside, desperate animals pressing their muzzles through the gaps in the bars, that they could not at first tell how many hounds were in there.

  ‘The last three,’ the man said proudly. ‘Last three mastiffs whelped off the Bankside bitches before they were shipped off to the Caribbean. Magnificent beasts, they are.’

  And Thomas had to admit that they were. The largest of them, at full stretch against the bars, was almost face to face with him and might have placed its massive paws on the shoulders of a man as tall as Seeker even. The muscles across neck and chest looked powerful enough to pull a cart, and the teeth revealed by the huge, gaping jaws would have ripped a man’s throat out in seconds, had the beast been so ordered or inclined. Even Lawrence, drawing closer to the cage and making calming sounds as he did so, looked impressed. The dogs continued to bark and scramble as Lawrence got closer, but gradually the barking became less aggressive and the scrambling less threatening. The smell, though, as they drew almost up to the cage, was worse. The worst of it was coming from an empty cage to the right of that in which the dogs were kept. Thomas wondered when its last occupant had left the manure-ridden hole.

  ‘What say you, then?’ asked the kennel master of Lawrence, recognising the servant as the man of the two newcomers who really knew dogs.

  Lawrence shook his head. ‘Never seen anything like them. Are they trained?’

  ‘Enough, but they need an expert handling.’

  ‘Aye. And have they fought?’

  ‘Not yet. Not ready. Nearly, mind, but not yet.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Another month maybe.’

  Lawrence looked at Thomas and Thomas shook his head. ‘Too long. I’d get in to the business sooner. I have – patrons – who would take an interest in this venture.’

  The man was back on his guard. ‘Private patrons?’

  ‘Are there any other kinds, in these benighted days?’

  ‘Fair enough. They got money to spend?’

  ‘Plenty,’ said Thomas. ‘I assure you.’

  ‘Take all three dogs?’

  ‘One,’ Lawrence said, ‘we’d start with one. See how it did.’

  Thomas wondered if Lawrence, mesmerised as he evidently was by the beasts, had forgotten that they were not in fact there to purchase a hound.

  ‘We might extend to the three,’ Thomas put in, ‘if the first proved promising.’

  ‘The others on deposit, like?’ the kennel master said.

  ‘Aye, something like that.’

  ‘Full price for the first, and the other two on deposit. For a fortnight. I’ve other customers interested.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Sir Thomas.

  ‘Aye, but I won’t give them to just anyone, not beasts of that quality. Has to be someone who knows what they’re about.’

  ‘Oh, I know what I’m about,’ said Lawrence, who had now got one of the beasts to sit in front of him, on the other side of the bars.

  ‘That’s the best one,’ the man put in quickly. ‘Cost a bit more.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ murmured Lawrence.

  ‘Full price for that one,’ said Sir Thomas, ‘and the others kept here on deposit for two weeks. If this one shows promise, we’ll take the other two, but the price has to be agreed today.’

  The man mentioned a number. Sir Thomas laughed and mentioned another. They haggled this way and that a full two minutes until they arrived at the figure they had both known from the start they would agree upon. Higher than most fighting dogs were worth. But Sir Thomas, who had lost and won several purses on dog fights in his time, could see that these were no common fighting dogs.

  Leaving Lawrence with the dogs, Thomas went with the kennel master to what passed for the man’s office. He missed his pistols, but he reckoned the promise of further money to come two weeks hence would keep him safe enough. He counted out the coin Seeker had given him, with the admonition that every penny should be accounted for. In his head, Thomas added his necessary losses to the old gambler on Dead Man’s Place, and the price of a decent late supper in some agreeable tavern for himself and Lawrence when their business here was done.

  ‘I’ll keep these other two in prime condition for you, have no fears of that,’ said the man, locking the coins away in a small iron chest. ‘Two weeks’ time, they’ll be just about perfect.’

  Thomas knew that now they had come to the most delicate part of the whole evening’s venture. ‘Only remember,’ he said with exaggerated caution, ‘the first must show promise.’

  ‘Certainly, it will show promise. Your man out there sees that for sure.’

  ‘I would have it proven,’ said Thomas.

  The expression on the man’s face showed that he was at last beginning to understand. ‘Ah, you mean to put him to the test.’

  ‘Exactly so,’ said Thomas. ‘As you may know by our speech, my man and I are down from Yorkshire. We’ve come to London for this specific purpose, but we are not familiar with the particular gentlemen here in the south who might be willing to assist us. In putting our dog to the test.’

  The kennel master nodded, a man of the world. ‘I can put you in the way of some other gentlemen, businessmen like myself, who would be happy to assist you in matching your dog.’

  Thomas shook his head. ‘It is no common dog fight that my patrons are interested in.’

  ‘I’ll get you the best of dogs to try him against.’

  Again Thomas shook his head. ‘Not dogs,’ he said. He held the man’s gaze a full minute.

  ‘Bulls?’ the kennel master offered at last, but Thomas could see from his face that the man knew he wasn’t talking about bulls. A third time he shook his head.

  The man’s jaw slackened. ‘There aren’t any left.’

  ‘Not what I’ve heard,’ said Thomas.

  ‘What have you heard?’

  ‘There’s at least one wasn’t shot.’

  The man turned away. ‘Rumour. Rumours’ll get you killed.’

  ‘Or make you very rich, if they’re true.’

  There was a pause. ‘How rich?’

  Thomas nodded towards the iron box into which the kennel master had put Seeker’s money. �
�So rich you can afford to throw away money like that on a dog that’ll have only one fight, and throw in two others just to secure it. Like I said – or maybe I didn’t – my patrons are very wealthy men, and they have very particular interests.’

  The man’s eyes travelled to the locked iron box. ‘It might take a while – need to be careful. Protector’s spies are everywhere.’

  ‘So I’m told. Too long and I go elsewhere. A message within the week to me at the Three Tobacco Pipes, Charing Cross, with the time and place to conclude our bargain, or you never see me or my money again. Now, I’ll have a leash off you, if you please. My man can handle a hound, once he has it trained, but I wouldn’t like to take a chance on letting that thing run loose on Lambeth Marsh.’

  Their guide long since having vanished into the night, Thomas also demanded a lantern from the kennel master, who, the promise of more money to come his best guarantee, was happy enough to return their arms and see them off his premises.

  The small door back out on to the marsh had not long been closed behind them when the sound of a cart trundling along behind them took their attention. It was making directly for a large set of gates at the far end of the enclosure they had just left. The cart was covered, and its sole visible occupant the driver, who was hunched over the reins, with his large hood pulled up. He brought out a long staff and rapped, in a distinct pattern, on the double gates in front of him. A moment later, the gates had been opened, and the kennel master was holding up a lamp to speak to the newcomer. Not far into their exchange, which appeared ill-natured, the kennel master pointed towards Thomas and Lawrence. The carter looked around towards them once, and that quickly, but it was enough: the movement had caused his hood to slip, and the light from the kennel master’s lamp had illuminated the man’s ruddy face, with its hawk-like nose.