Staying on her knees, for she did not trust the motion of the wagon would make a reliable floor, she made for the bed. To her surprise, she could feel fresh, clean sheets already made it up. Climbing onto it, she removed her cloak, bonnet and shoes, set them on the top of one of the large trunks, and then rolled onto her side, letting her weary eyes drift shut.
When next she woke, she realized immediately that they had come to a halt. She blinked a moment, rolled onto her back, and gazed up at the wooden roof above her. They must have arrived at whatever destination Benedict Toomes had intended. But why had he not roused her from her sleep?
She sat up and peered around her at the strange surroundings. She could hardly believe this wooden box with windows was his house. Betsy would have been appalled to find this as her new home, she reflected. As for herself, living in two shabby rooms with the six Napps and their four apprentices had taught her to be grateful for any roof over her head, however strange.
Tentatively, she set her foot over the edge of the mattress onto the floor and took a step. In her stockinged feet she tiptoed over to the covered window and, lifting one edge of the sacking, peered out.
To her astonishment, the sight that met her eyes was a great open field full of wagons and tethered horses and campfires. The field beyond in the distance seemed to be full of what she thought at first were canvas sails flapping in the wind, like little boats bobbing in the sea.
Had he brought her to the coast, she wondered with a lurch of excitement? Her aunt had once been persuaded to take a rest cure at Brighton after a bout of influenza, but Lizzie had not been permitted to accompany her. Then she frowned. Surely, they were not boats, but rather tents.
Then she remembered he had said they were going to Greenwich, not the seaside. Greenwich at Easter, she thought, piecing the puzzle together distractedly, when suddenly she let out a gasp. Surely, he could not have meant the infamous Greenwich Fair?
Her heart thudded as her spirits plummeted to her stockinged feet. Oftentimes, she had heard her uncle holding forth on the immorality and excesses of those springtime revels. No woman of respectability, he had always intoned gravely, would permit herself to be escorted to such a bacchanalia of wickedness. Of course, at the time, Lizzie had never thought there would be the slightest chance of her ever attending.
A sudden knock on the side of the wagon almost made her cry out with alarm.
“Lizzie, come out, my family’s here to meet with you,” called out her new husband’s voice.
Lizzie froze. His family? She did not recall Betsy ever mentioning that he even had one. Pausing only to shove her feet back into her ankle boots, she crossed to the door, squared her shoulders, and swung it open.
“Here she is, my four-day bride,” Benedict said in an expressionless voice, and Lizzie felt her color rise. Stood on either side of him were two men between whom she could see bore a very strong family resemblance to Benedict. They stood looking her over critically, Lizzie thought. Rather as if she were a mare one of them had bought at a horse fair.
When she stood hovering on the footboard, one of them was moved to speech. “Nay, lass, don’t be shy,” said the one stood to Benedict’s right who sported a fine pair of sideburns. “We’re your new brothers-in-law. I’m Frank and this here is Jack,” he said motioning to the third brother who had a moustache. Other than the facial hair, their coloring was like her husband’s, with their tanned skin and curling brown hair. Like him, they were tall and wore dark breeches and waistcoats, their shirt collars open at the neck.
“Cat got her tongue?” Jack asked rudely, sticking his hands in his pockets and looking at Benedict rather than to her.
Benedict smirked. “She’s usually got plenty to say for herself,” he said coming forward and, seizing her about the waist, swung her down onto the ground.
Lizzie bit back her exclamation of annoyance at this treatment and instead straightened herself, for she had realized her dress was disheveled from sleep. Even worse, she had forgotten her bonnet and her hair was straggling about her having come out of its neat bun.
Seizing her courage, she turned resolutely to Frank who seemed the more polite of the two. “How do you do,” she said with polite formality.
He grinned at her and offered his hand which she shook. “It’s nice to meet you, Lizzie,” he said cheerfully. “Welcome to the family.”
“Thank you.”
She turned to Jack, who pulled his hand out of his pocket. “Likewise,” he drawled.
“Charmed, I’m sure,” said Lizzie dryly as she shook his hand. Frank threw back his head and laughed heartily, though she thought Jack looked a little taken aback.
“You’ll have to bring her over to the campfire tonight to meet Ma,” Frank said. “And take your supper with us.”
Benedict shrugged. “We’ll have to see how we go.”
“You coming with us now to help us set up the booth?” Jack asked. “If you want back in the business, you’ll have to do your fair share.” Lizzie saw Jack quail at the look Benedict turned on him.
“Ready to pay me now for your third of the business, are you?” Benedict asked in freezing tones. “The way I look at it, I legally own the lion’s share.”
“None of that now,” Frank said heartily. “None of that! We all know Ben’s always pulled his weight and none could say any different. As for what Jack owes, he’s good for it. Not going anywhere now, is he?”
Jack flushed and looked away and Benedict relaxed. Lizzie quickly deduced Frank must be the peacemaker, and she wondered what their birth order was. If she had to make a guess, it would be that Jack was the youngest.
“We’re heading over to the booth now,” Frank added affably. “It’s as good an opportunity to show it to Lizzie before it’s full of – ” He bit back the words he’d intended. “Punters,” he finished after a moment’s hesitation.
Benedict cast her a speculative look which immediately put Lizzie on her guard. “Aye, that’s true enough,” he conceded. “Fetch your cloak.” He turned away and started a low toned conversation with Frank before she could raise any objection to this plan. And what, pray, did they mean by ‘the booth’?
The manner he had of barking out orders was certainly not likely to endear him to her any time soon, she thought grimly as she jammed her bonnet on her head and threw her cloak about her shoulders. As soon as she rejoined them outside, the four of them set off across the field toward the flapping white tents she had initially mistaken for sails.
As they grew closer, she saw the size and shape of the tents varied. Some were as big as a marquee and their signs gave wild boasts that they contained a whole theatre troupe or even a ballroom. Others were so small; they were little more than a sheltering tarpaulin pulled over a table piled high with oranges or gingerbread.
Lizzie gaped with rounded eyes at the painted banners which made their grand boasts. ‘Returning from a triumphant tour of The Americas’ claimed The Philmore Players. She turned to Benedict wanting to ask him if the tent really held a portable stage, but he was deep in conversation with his brothers, so she held her tongue.
“That’s our pitch over there,” Jack said suddenly, pointing to where a loaded cart sat squarely in the middle of an area marked out by wooden stakes hammered into the ground.
Benedict narrowed his eyes. “It’s a fair spot,” he said grudgingly. “Though we’re next to the clowns.”
Lizzie followed the direction of their gaze and saw a strange assortment of people arguing over a pile of poles and strings.
Frank shrugged. “They draw a crowd; you can’t deny that, Ben.”
“I can’t stand clowns,” Benedict scowled.
Lizzie, who had never been to see such an act, stared hard. She found it hard to believe that so quarrelsome and tense a bunch could be capering clowns. Not one of them looked remotely merry. Suddenly one of them threw down his armful of sticks and began jumping up and down on them in an explosion of wrath. His fellows quickly fell silent and
avoided each other’s eyes as they went about their tasks in perfect silence.
Benedict and Jack walked past them without acknowledgment, though Frank raised a friendly hand which was ignored. When the Toomes’ reached their wagon, they immediately began unpacking the contents.
Lizzie stood to one side. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked, clearing her throat. She was still wondering exactly what the Toomes brothers were purveyors of.
“Just stand there and look pretty,” Frank quipped with a wink.
Not bothering to make reply to so foolish a comment, Lizzie turned instead and looked with interest at the industrious activity all around her. As far as the eye could see there were stalls and tents being erected. She was flabbergasted that Greenwich Fair could be such a huge event. She had, had no notion that it could be so vast.
Opposite her, a man was hammering a post into the ground with a sign bearing a naked depiction of Adam and Eve, made decent only by the judicious placement of fig leaves. She was just wondering what their business could possibly be when another started unloading crates of bottled beers and liquors and carrying them inside. It was a public house, she realized with disbelief, her mouth falling open. Her bosom swelled with indignation at their daring to take a biblical name for their den of iniquity!
“Told you we had a prime spot,” Jack said, nodding toward the beer tent.
Behind her, the Toomes brothers were moving purposefully and briskly as their own booth started to take shape. It was a large square tent of off-colored white, and to Lizzie’s eye it looked rather devoid of interest. All around her she saw colored flags and bunting, but there seemed precious little to entice a passer-by into the Toomes’ enclave.
“Here,” said Benedict thrusting a rolled-up pile of fabric into her arms. “Unfold this.”
He picked up another and started to unfurl it, as Lizzie shook out the large banner, he had given her. ‘Toomes Family Boxing Booth’ was spelt out on it in large red and black letters. Well, at least she knew what their act was, she thought with sinking heart. After all, she had known he was a prizefighter.
From each corner of the sign was a length of string, presumably for attaching it to the tent. Lizzie had just sat herself down onto the grass and started unknotting the strings when Benedict turned with a snarl toward his brothers.
“What the fuck is this?” he demanded, holding his own banner aloft.
Frank and Jack looked at each other furtively before they turned back to their brother. Lizzie looked at the long sign painted in red and yellow with the interest. ‘The Battling Burnett Sisters’ it proclaimed jauntily.
Frank scratched the back of his neck. “We had to take on another turn, Ben. While you were serving your stretch. Me and Jack weren’t enough to carry the show. Not on our own.”
“We’re the Fighting Toomes’,” Benedict pointed out coldly. “Not a freak show.”
“Now don’t be like that,” Frank sighed.
“We knew you wouldn’t want us letting Pa back in the act,” Jack piped up. “He came sniffing round as soon as he knew you weren’t on the scene.”
Benedict immediately went rigid. “You’d better not have,” he growled.
“Of course we didn’t!” Frank scoffed, but Lizzie could see he looked uneasy.
“Did you give him any money?” Benedict persisted.
“Course he did!” Jack burst out contemptuously. “You know what he’s like where the old man’s concerned.”
“He is our father,” Frank said wretchedly. “And he – ”
“Save it!” Benedict growled. “I don’t want to hear it! If I see him anywhere about, I’ll ram his teeth down his throat with my fist.”
Lizzie gasped at the visceral image this conjured. She had never dreamed such filial impiety was even possible.
Benedict threw her a warning glance before he continued. “And this?” he hissed, holding up the yellow banner.
Frank gazed back at him appealingly. “They were a real draw, Ben. We made more at Hull last year than we have in a long time – ”
“They’re still a fixture, then?” Benedict ground out furiously.
“Sadly not,” Jack replied. “Would you believe someone only went and reported us the next month at the Goose Fair?” He sounded aggrieved. “The law showed up, slapped a heavy fine on us, and forbid them to box.”
“It’s prohibited for women to box publicly,” Frank added. “It’s alright so long as no one sells you down the river, but we got stung good and proper.”
“Apparently,” said Jack contemptuously. “There’s those that think it’s an affront to public decency. As though Ma didn’t tell us she watched Elizabeth Wilkinson back in the day fight both men and women and gouge and kick as good as any man.”
Benedict glanced briefly at Lizzie. “Those were different times,” he muttered, throwing the banner down onto the ground contemptuously, flinging off across the field without so much as a glance in her direction.
Lizzie sat a moment, wondering if she should scramble to her feet and follow him. Then with a shrug, she decided to finish untangling the knotted strings instead.
“Jesus, I’d forgotten what a moody bastard he could be,” Jack said, wiping his brow. “I hope you know what you’ve let yourself in for.”
Lizzie ignored him. Whoever had torn the banner down at their last show the previous year had done so with a shocking lack of care. For some reason, she suspected Jack was the culprit.
“He was bound to take it hard,” Frank said fairly. “We didn’t consult him, after all.”
“What happened to them?” asked Lizzie curiously. “The Battling Miss Burnetts, I mean.”
“We had to let them go,” Frank replied absently, stroking his full sideburns. “It was a damn shame, but that fine really cut into the profits and we do the bigger fairs, so it’s not like we could get away with going unregulated.”
“They’ll be touring the smaller fairs now,” Jack explained. “Maybe have gone abroad. Prime pair of girls they were too and decent boxers, whatever Ben thinks of it.”
Lizzie nodded and carried on tugging away at the knotted string until she had eased all the snarls out.
7
Benedict only made it to the end of the field before he stopped with a muffled oath and swung back around again. After all, what’s done was done. He hadn’t been around last season, and things had moved on without him. What was the point in cutting up rough? Especially when he was planning on abandoning the family business for good at the end of the season.
It was good, he told himself, frowning ferociously, that Frank had some new ideas. He’d need them in the future when Benedict wasn’t there to carry them anymore. Jack was a feckless idiot, and Frank was too busy trying to juggle his roles as husband, older brother, and dutiful son to really be successful in any of his endeavors.
By the time Benedict had made his way back to the booth, the main red and black sign had been affixed to the tent and the yellow one had disappeared. Jack had sprung onto the pony’s back, and Frank was offering to hand Lizzie up into the cart.
“She’ll walk back with me,” Benedict said dismissively.
“We’ll see you this evening, then,” Frank persisted. “At supper.”
He shrugged a non-committal reply as Lizzie stepped back and the horse and cart trundled away. Jack gave him an ironic salute which he ignored, turning instead to Lizzie.
“We’ll walk back the roundabout way,” he said. “You can get your bearings that way.”
She looked surprised, but quickly fell in step alongside him. “I don’t understand. How does boxing for your living work?” she asked after a few moments silence. “Does the general public pay an admission fee to watch you fight?”
“Yes.” Feeling her eyes on him, he turned to look at her. “It’s a ha’penny entrance.”
“I see,” she said with a frown. “How many people do you suppose you could fit in your tent?”
“Forty,” he hazarded. “Mayb
e fifty.”
“And you and your brothers box each other for the entertainment of the crowd?” She frowned. “Do they not grow bored of watching the same matches? Do you have no other boxers on the roster for variety’s sake?”
He cast a glance at her. “We sometimes spar each other, but in general it’s volunteers from the crowd.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Usually someone in the audience fancies their chances.”
She gave an exclamation. “You mean, you box with visitors to the fair?” She sounded shocked.
“The fair moves around. We box with all comers; miners, colliers, navvies. We don’t discriminate.”
“It hardly seems sportsmanlike,” she pointed out primly. “If they have not had formal training in the art.”
A reluctant smile tugged at his lips. “The science,” he corrected her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Some would say boxing’s a science rather than an art.”
She gazed at him. “Oh?” She sounded dubious but did not argue. Instead, she gazed at him frankly. “I cannot fathom why anyone should challenge you so foolishly.”
This time he could not prevent his smile. “You have to put yourself in their shoes,” he said after a moment’s pause. “They’re on a half day holiday and likely liquored up. Or maybe they’re a big fish in a small pond.”
“You mean,” she said slowly. “That they might believe themselves proficient in fisticuffs?”
“A man usually knows if he can hold his own in a fight.”
She shuddered. “It all sounds positively barbaric!”
“There’s a money prize to be taken into account too,” he pointed out. “If they can go three rounds with one of us, they win a pound.”
“A pound?” Lizzie echoed in shock. He said nothing. “That is a great deal of money. But what is a round?”
A Substitute Wife for the Prizefighter: A Victorian Romance Page 6