Merciless Reason

by Oisin McGann

  He walked through Half Moon Place, among shacks and buildings that seemed to be competing with each other to see which could slump in the most ungainly fashion. Street urchins played with stray dogs in the maze of laneways, amused themselves at the expense of passers-by, and picked the occasional pocket. This was one of the oldest parts of town, yet still a mere infant compared to places like Dublin or Cork in the Old Country. Mills and factories had sprung up in the city with the onward charge of the Industrial Revolution, the smoke of the business boom rising from a hundred tall chimneys. Science was beginning to render skilled humans obsolete, and the city had been introduced to the concept of smog.

  After hours of what seemed like aimless wandering, Nate arrived in Charlestown. The basset hound was flagging, its short legs struggling to keep up with Nate’s long strides. It still wagged its tail whenever it found Nate looking down at it, but while its spirit was willing, its body was weak. It panted at high speed, its unfeasibly long tongue almost dragging on the ground. Nate took in his surroundings, noting the heights of the roofs on the buildings above him. Then he suddenly darted down a narrow alleyway and vaulted over the six-foot-high wall at the end. The dog tried to follow but, finding itself stranded behind the obstacle, gave a long dejected howl and then started barking frantically.

  Nate scrambled up a pile of crates and hurried along the top of another wall to the roof of a shed, from where he climbed a drainpipe to the flat roof of a brownstone building overlooking the alley.

  Lying down, he crawled up to the wall at the edge of the roof and peered over. Below and to his left, he saw the dog standing with its front paws against the wall, barking its head off. A man in a dark grey hat and coat walked up to it. The dog stopped barking and turned to nuzzle its owner’s hand. Nate could not see the man’s face under the hat, but he recognized the walk, the posture, immediately. Pulling away from the edge, he rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky.

  It really was time to get out of Boston. And to do that he was going to have to make some money, fast. It was probably just as well—he needed to let off some steam.

  Nathaniel knew the Peggy Sayer by reputation—everyone who spent any time in Boston knew of it. It was a pit of a place, the kind of tavern that never truly closed, with men staggering drunk from its double doors at all hours to collapse in the street, raucous music jolting through its timbers and the sound of shouts and breaking glass filling its interior.

  Evening was falling as Nate walked up to the doors of the pub, glancing in through the slats in its shuttered windows at the commotion inside. Outside, to one side of the door, a young man lay groaning in a pile of rotten turnips. A worn-faced woman in a drab, woolen dress stood over him, her head and shoulders wrapped in a black shawl. She directed a breathless stream of abuse at him in guttural Irish. The man did not respond; though whether he did not understand, or he did not care, it was hard to say.

  Inside the Peggy Sayer, the air was saturated with the smell of pipe smoke, beer, whiskey, sweat and stewed meat and pastry. From somewhere wafted the bile stench of vomit. Nate would have been willing to bet that fresh air had not intruded on this place in decades. The crowd was mostly made up of men, with a few martyred wives drowning their sorrows and some cackling strumpets added to the mix. If cleanliness was next to godliness, there were no saints to be found here.

  The stools, benches and tables were bare wood, any varnish long worn away. The bar was little better—a rough slab of boards, coated in spills, running the full length of the large room. An array of bottles was displayed on the shelves behind it, along with the obligatory mirrors. Framed prints of famous boxers were gradually turning yellow on the walls all around the room. Nate pushed his way through the throng to the bar. The proprietor, wearing a white apron, was in the middle of cleaning a glass by spitting in it and wiping it with a rag.

  “What can I get you?” he asked.

  “Ronan,” Nate said to him.

  The barman tilted his head towards a door at the back. Nate zig-zagged among the revelers to the door and knocked. It was opened by a bald man with cauliflower ears and no neck.

  “I’m looking for Ronan,” Nate told him.

  “Who sent you?” the man demanded with a heavy Boston accent.

  Nate paused for just a second. He doubted if a lieutenant in the Royal Navy would be held in high regard in these parts. He took a gamble.

  “Bushnell, captain of the Odin.”

  “Hah! Bushnell, is it?” the man barked, his face splitting into a wide grin. “How is the old goat?”

  “Dead,” Nate told him. “Killed by a sea monster.”

  “Had to happen sometime,” the doorman replied with a grunt. “Down the stairs, along the corridor and through the door. Ronan’s down the back, in the tweed jacket. The first bout’s just over. You’ll want to get your money in fast for the next one.”

  Nate passed two more sentries on the way down the corridor. They watched him as he went through, but said nothing. The door at the end of the corridor opened onto a roaring mob of men. There were hardly any women to be seen, but one or two shrill voices were raised among the mass.

  This room was smaller than the last, with all the stink of the front of the building mixed with the iron smell of blood. There was no furniture to be seen among the crowd milling round the center of the floor. Nate squeezed through to the circle of men surrounding the empty space in the middle of the room, where two men were struggling to revive a third. The unconscious man was stripped to the waist, showing an overfed but muscular body covered in red impact marks that would soon become nasty bruises. His face was bloodied and disfigured.

  Standing over them, shaking his fists in the air, was a man who stood about six and a half foot tall, with the shoulders of an ox and arms heaving with muscles. A man in a smart tweed suit was holding up the fighter’s arm and shouting to the crowd in a hoarse Kerry accent.

  “… Undefeated for more den four years and dis evening, once again, he hes showed you why! Dee greatest fighter in dee North American states! Gintlemen, I give you Pat ‘Dee Axe’ Healy!”

  The mob bellowed their approval and the Axe shook his fists again and roared like a man possessed, loving his victory. Nate waited until the proceedings had died down a little. Another man stepped up and announced the next bout, and in the crowd money began to change hands. Ronan was making for a door at the back of the room. Nate intercepted the man before he reached it.

  “My name’s Jim Hawkins,” he said. “I’m looking for a fight. I hear you pay well.”

  Ronan regarded him closely for a moment, sizing him up. He saw a young man with work-hardened hands and a face weathered by time at sea. And he saw Nate’s eyes, a gaze that lacked … something. Hope, perhaps. Some men came here because their lives were empty, or they were consumed with guilt. They came to be punished. These men did not last long in the ring. But some of the most entertaining fighters were those with nothing to lose—and entertainment was Ronan’s stock and trade.

  “Yur a little on the willowy side for dis business, led,” he said in a grating Kerry brogue. “What makes yeh think yeh make de cut?”

  “Does it matter if I don’t?” Nate replied.

  “Not to you, perhaps. But my customers come here lookin’ for sport—a real prizefight,” Ronan replied, ushering him into the office. “Brawls are ten-a-penny. I deal in the art of pugilism. Skill, speed, power, nerve, endurance. Can yeh deliver dat, young Hawkins?”

  “Put me on with your best man and we’ll find out,” Nate said to him.

  Ronan laughed, walking across the plush office to sit down behind a teak, green-baize-covered desk.

  “My bist man?” he chortled. “My bist just lift a professional pug half-did. And lucky not to be full-did at dat. Yeh hef to earn the right to fight him. Lit’s start you off easy, shall we? I’ll put you on wit ‘Mangle’ McDaid. A hard man, but punches like
a drunken windmill. He’s taken too many tumps to the hid to tink in a straight line. Less money to be made, but sure, yer more likely to be alive at dee end of it. Den we can see if yer up to a serious metch.”

  Nate took a few seconds to look around the office, looking for a way to get the most out of this man. He needed a fight with as large a purse as possible. He only had time for one bout before he left Boston for good. Nate didn’t give a damn how tough …

  His eyes fell upon a picture on the wall to his left. It was one of perhaps twenty covering the wall. They were well-framed, some photographs, others engravings or drawings. But that one picture froze Nate to the spot.

  “What are these?” he asked.

  “Pest champions,” Ronan informed him. “De best fighters to come tru here.”

  “Who’s this one here?” Nate asked, unable to help himself. “Looks like a right yaw-yaw.”

  “Hah! One of our ‘gintleman.’”

  pugilists.” The man stood up from his desk and moved closer to the pictures. “Det’s Marcus Wildenstern, of dee Wildensterns. Yeh wouldn’t credit it, would yeh? A proper toff like him, one of the bist fighters I’ve ever seen. If y’ask me, he wiz a man who couldn’t live life by halves. Worked harrd in business, and den kem down here to play even harrder. Only iver beaten de once.”

  “By who?” Nate asked.

  “By Pat ‘Dee Axe’ Healy,” Ronan said softly. “De man you saw outside.”

  Nate stared at the picture of his beloved older brother, who had died … it seemed so long ago, but could not have been much more than four years. Killed by their cousin, Gerald—by Nate’s best friend. What did this mean, that Marcus’s face was on the wall here, in this place? Was there anywhere Nate could go to get away from the Wildensterns? Was this why Marcus had come here? To face down life without the protection of money, power, influence, or family connections? Nate found himself grinding his teeth.

  “Put me on with Healy,” he growled quietly. “I’ll give you a show you’ll never forget.”

  Ronan looked from the picture to Nate and back again, a frown on his face. A light came on in his eyes.

  “I tink you might at det,” he muttered.

  III

  TOO PRETTY TO SPOIL

  NATE WAS LED THROUGH THE CROWD to the center of the room, where a circle of burly men formed a ring. No ropes or corners here. The sawdust on the floorboards was stained with blood in places, some dried in, faint and brown with age, other splashes still bright and wet and red. He would have to watch his footing; some of that would be slippery.

  He was taking a chance in removing his shirt—someone might still recognize his scars. But it was one of the few rules: no shirts, no shoes, no weapons … no referee, no judges. Just the crowd, looking for a good fight. The bout could be won only by knockout or submission.

  Nate stood in the empty space at the center of the crowd, waiting for his opponent. All around him, the spectators gave him disparaging looks and spoke poorly of his chances. They knew who he was fighting. Odds were given. Money was passed back and forth.

  “God, Ronan, don’t put dat fella on!” a woman’s voice called out. “Sure, he’s too pretty to spoil!”

  The other women in the room laughed, and some of the men too.

  Then the Axe strode through the mob, which parted like water around him. He raised his fists in the air, circling the ring, snarling like an animal, working the spectators into a feverish excitement. Nate studied him—his gestures, his movements. Pat ‘The Axe’ Healy was the worst kind of opponent: muscular enough to be fearsomely powerful, but without the kind, of bulk that would slow him down. His hands were like the paws of a bear, but he moved with the savage grace of a big cat. By the looks of his face and body, and the gold teeth in his mouth, he had taken batterings in the past—but not recently. There was a cruel intelligence in his eyes. The Axe was a terribly violent man, but he was no mindless thug. He was everything Nate did not want to fight.

  “Ladeez and Gintlemen!” Ronan bellowed, stepping into the ring. “Ladeez and Gintlemen, we bring you a very special bout tonight. For five years, Pat ‘Dee Axe’ Healy has ruled the ring, since taking the title from the previous holder; de man we discovered wiz none other than Marcus Wildenstern! And what a bettle det was!”

  The crowd roared their agreement.

  “Well, tonight Healy defends his title once more!” Ronan announced, his blood up, his face going a bright red. “And baying for his blood is a mighty contender indeed—one who has more reason than most to bury the fearsome Axe!”

  Nate kept his eyes on the floor, but felt his heart skip a beat. Could Ronan know? Surely he wouldn’t—

  “Ladeez and Gintlemen, I give you a man who disappeared three years ago, after his family wiz attecked and many of dem killed outright! After the family chapel wiz destroyed by a bomb in a coffin, Ladeez and Gintlemen! Here is the man who chased down the blackguard responsible, beat the tar out of him and threw him off a cliff! Now, after three years of wandering the world, he hes returned to claim his birthright, and with it the bare-knuckle title in Boston, Massachusetts!

  “Ladeez and Gintlemen, I give you NATHANIEL ‘THE AVENGER’ WILDENSTERN!”

  Nate swore under his breath. There was no escaping it now. But that was just fine. Let the cards fall where they may; he simply did not care any more.

  Rolling his head around, he shook out his arms and bounced on the balls of his feet. On the other side of the circle, Healy spat on his hands and rubbed them together, a man about to start his work. Then he gobbed on the floor and nodded to Nate. There the pleasantries ended.

  They met in the middle of the floor and Healy laid in with a couple of lazy swings. He was feeling Nate out, seeing how he would move. Nate dodged them easily, but was caught on the chin by a jab that seemed little more than a flicker of Healy’s left hand. It rocked Nate’s head back and he staggered, ducking under a right hook that looked powerful enough to shatter his skull. Healy anticipated the duck, coming in hard with a left uppercut as Nate’s head came down. Nate deflected it and came up hard, driving his fist into Healy’s throat.

  It was a good hit and Healy felt it, coughing as he stumbled back towards the edge of the ring. One advantage to being a shorter opponent was that you could punch up, driving up with your whole body—you had less power when you punched downwards. Nate followed him, fists raised, swivelling at the hips as if preparing for another punch. Healy raised his guard, but Nate whipped his shin out instead, knocking Healy’s right leg out to the side. Almost in the same motion, he caught Healy’s left knee with a back kick. Then he brought his foot back down and up hard into the big man’s groin. Instead of hitting soft testicles, Nate felt a hard, piercing pain in his shin and pulled his leg back. There were spots of blood on his trouser leg. Healy was wearing some kind of groin guard, one lined with sharp studs.

  “I’ve fought too many Chinamen to be caught with those fancy kicks, lad,” Healy chuckled. “Try something else!”

  He laughed—as did some of the crowd—and then he came in fast. Nate evaded the first two hooks, and the uppercut that followed just scraped past his jaw, but as he stepped to the side, he walked right into a punch to his abdomen that drove the air out of his lungs and dropped him to his knees. He narrowly avoided getting a knee in the face, rolling to the side and then again to avoid Healy’s stamping foot. He was up on his feet before the Axe could get in another kick, but that right hook came swinging round again, and this time it hit Nate’s face like a lump hammer. Nate felt an explosion across his cheek and the crack of bone breaking. He cried out, falling back towards the crowd, breathing blood through his teeth. He couldn’t take another hit like that.

  They pushed him forward before he was ready and he stumbled.

  “Go on, Pat!” one man roared. “Stick the head on ’im!”

  Trying to block out the fire in the flesh of his
face, Nate slipped past Healy’s jabbing left fist and hit the bigger man in the floating ribs, slamming the heels of his hands in to either side of his opponent’s torso. Healy’s body was like wood, but Nate got a grunt of pain out of him. And then got another blow to the belly for his troubles. He bent forward and Healy swung a forearm down like an axe. Nate moved at the last instant and the blow fell on his shoulders rather than his neck. It still nearly flattened him, white-hot darts of pain shooting down his spine and through his injured face.

  He had no doubt that strike would have broken his neck. That was the Axe’s finishing blow—a killing blow. But Nate had seen Healy’s left arm swing back behind him as he brought his right down. The move opened him up on the left side of his body.

  Healy went to butt him in the face. Nate jerked back, grabbed his upper arm, spun sharply and flicked his hips up into Healy’s hips. The man flew across the ring, landing on the boards on his back. But he was up in a flash, wiping sawdust from his shoulders, not a bother on him.

  “Jaysus! Will yeh come on, Healy!” one of the men on the edge of the ring exclaimed. “He’s makin’ a holy show of yeh!”

  Healy clearly objected to the criticism, turning to ram his fist into the man’s nose. The boxing critic dropped like a sack of bricks. His limp body was dragged away into the crowd, his place taken by another eager spectator.

  The ancient thing beneath Nate’s ribs squirmed, wanting to help. He felt a flush of unnatural power glow in his abdomen. Nate willed the thing into submission, fearful of releasing his hold on it. Besides, this was his fight. His body ached, his face felt as if his whole head had been run over by a train, his left eye was already swelling shut, but this was his fight. Pushing forward, he swung his shin into the side of the Axe’s thigh to slow him down. It had hardly any effect. Nate’s strength was failing.

  Healy lashed out with his foot, aiming for Nate’s groin. But he wasn’t as quick with his feet as he was with his hands. Nate rode the blow, falling into a backward roll. Let the Axe try his finishing move again, Nate just had to land with his feet right … Healy was lunging in at him as Nate came up into a crouch. The back of his neck was exposed for just a second and Healy’s forearm came down with the force of a falling tree.