The Boxer and the Blacksmith

by Edie Cay

  3

  Os leaned back in his chair in the yard, watching the chickens peck after the feed. Brutus, the old floppy-eared mutt, slept nearby. There was enough sun for a faint spring heat and Os couldn’t resist tucking his great arms behind his head and stretching out to his full length.

  The sun felt good on his bare skin after the long winter. These small bits of heat worked at his memories—the old ones, the hazy ones—reminding him of places where his scalp had sizzled in the sun. In them, the prickle of sweat at his spindly elbows and the backs of his knees had been constant, the overwhelming heat then quenched by cool water washing down his throat. In the background there was always the sound of his mother humming, working a needle and thread, the flash of silver glinting as she sewed in morning light, her head bent.

  Jean stood in the road, dealing with the ironmonger. Os had gone over the numbers while they broke their fast, making sure Jean knew why Os ordered what he had, the prices he expected, and market rates he’d known in Manchester. London was a different place, sometimes a different country. But it felt right here, as if fate had brought him.

  But it wasn’t fate, exactly—it was a sliver of hope. When Os had finished his apprenticeship and begun earning money of his own, he asked Chitley again if he would help him find his mother. Chitley had eyed him with the same cold disinterest he showed in every interaction and told him that if Os would write the letters, he would frank them. For years, Os corresponded with anyone who would return his letters, finding the most luck with the vicar of a church in Freetown. Mr. Stratton, who worked alongside the Society for the Brotherhood of Mankind in Manchester, was happy to pore over church ledgers of births, deaths, and marriages; visit plantations and make inquiries; and do all that Os could possibly ask. Then, in 1816, there had been a rebellion. A bloody putdown. The upheaval quieted Stratton’s letters. Finally, last year, Stratton had written again, this time telling Os once more about a woman named Thomasina who was working as a seamstress in Freetown and had lost a child. But it was a common name, and a common story. Stratton concluded his letter with the news that supposedly, this Thomasina the seamstress had moved to London before the rebellion.

  But on a name and a needle, Os moved to London.

  Os opened his eyes, returning his thoughts back to the chicken yard and isolated patches of icy puddles. Back to poor English weather. At least London had more sun than where he’d been.

  The ironmonger glanced over as he debated Jean. Though he stood in the road, a fair distance away, Os could practically smell the man. He had few teeth remaining and those were stained yellow by tobacco. When listening to Jean, he would move his mouth as if he were tasting his last meal from the backsides of his teeth. It hadn’t been Os’s intention to hand over supply ordering to Jean, but the ironmonger told them during his first visit that he would not deal with those soaked with a tar brush.

  While there had been little resistance to his buying the foundry, Os found that no matter what he did, there was always a criticism. If he continued to work while Jean spoke with vendors, there would be an inevitable remark about his lack of capacity for thought. If he fed the chickens, then it was “beast knows beast.” If he sat and enjoyed the sunshine, he was of “a race of sloth.”

  Now Os made it a game to torment the ironmonger. Today’s full stretch in the sunshine intimidated the man. Os’s height and strength were necessary assets as a blacksmith, but they scared the very devil out of a certain type of Englishman. Even if slavery was illegal in England, it didn’t mean these men had forgotten the decades of West Indian plantation owners’ pamphlets about their darker-skinned brothers.

  Os eyeballed the ironmonger, pulling his elbows back, flexing the muscles in his chest and shoulders as he did so. The ironmonger shifted his weight from side to side, trying to pay attention as Jean negotiated the order.

  Finally, the man climbed back on the cart and drove away. Jean strode over, hands in his pocket, shaking his head.

  “You pleased with yourself?” Jean scowled.

  Os shielded his eyes from the sun, looking up at his apprentice. “What price did you get?”

  “The one you wanted. Delivery tomorrow morning,” Jean said. “He’s scared witless of you.”

  Os stood, satisfied that the day had started out well. “Time to get to work.”

  “Is your lady boxer coming by today?” Jean asked, shuffling after Os.

  “Feed the fire,” Os said, slipping his leather apron on over his head, tying it around his back. Jean obeyed, still chattering as he shoveled coal into the forge.

  His lady boxer had not understood his interest, that much was clear. But he didn’t take kindly to her assumption that he would only be interested in her out of cruelty or jest. Perhaps he shouldn’t have left so abruptly, but he was tired of being ascribed motives that were not his own.

  Os sorted through the tools for the day, readying the projects slated. He had several orders of carriage springs, some repairs of older tools, and typically a man with a horse showed up at some point, needing farrier work done.

  He doubted Miss Abbott would ever grace his door. Jean could prod all he wanted about her; it wouldn’t bother Os to summon her image to mind, replaying how she fought in the street in front of his own eyes. Which wasn’t as interesting as her arm pressing against his as they walked to the shuttered pub. Or her tongue licking the pasty’s filling off her thumb, the amused challenge in her eyes when she caught him staring.

  “Sir?” Jean questioned, his lean face showing concern.

  Os shook his head, Jean was right to pull him back to the work in front of him. Instead of answering his apprentice, he grunted and got to work repairing a roofing hammer for the carpenter down the road.

  The shaft of the hammer popped out with a quick blow from his mallet. The metal was warped and misshapen from years of hard use. Normally Os would council Mr. Hayes to purchase a new hammer, as the metal clearly had too many impurities in it, but he understood the desire to keep what was familiar, what was proven.

  After heating the lump of metal, returning to the anvil, holding it with tongs, and shaping it, he also considered that if a man never tried anything new, a man might never experience anything better.

  Os looked up, squinting into the daylight that spilled into the front half of the foundry.

  If he could take such risks and come out on top, maybe it was time to change his luck when it came to lady boxers, too. He’d never pursued a woman before—his affair with Sophia had been an easy acquaintance that developed on its own, with little need to aid it along. But Miss Abbott was as receptive as a barn cat.

  “Jean, why don’t you run down to the Pig and Thistle and get us two pasties,” Os said.

  Jean looked up, confused. “But we are working.”

  “I have work to do,” Os said. “You need to stop talking.”

  Jean’s head tilted to the side as a smile grew. “But that is where they train pugilists, do they not?”

  “Get the coin from inside,” Os said. “I’ll finish up the tools on my own.”

  “I will tell you everything,” Jean promised.

  “Yer late,” Tony said, lifting the curtain that separated the public, house with its high tables and chairs, from the musty training room in the back. She’d already spent the early morning there, jumping rope and running obstacles that Tony had set up the night before. If she were one of the other fighters, she would be out running with the dawn in Regent’s Park, but Tony had always insisted that she not train in public like them.

  “Not late,” Bess countered, despite knowing she was late by her own standards. After finishing her dawn sessions every morning in the back of the pub, she rubbed down her muscles with a coarse linen cloth, occasionally kicking the wall, hoping to wake up Tony. As her trainer, it was his job to make sure her pores were open, helping her purge. But as she returned to Mrs. Martin’s to rest and change, her mind drifted, and dressing for the second time that day seemed to take longer. T
he lacing of her boots felt oddly complicated as she pictured the cant of the blacksmith’s head as he had smiled at her. The hungry look in his eye when she licked the pasty’s juices from her thumb.

  Even Mrs. Martin commented on her unusually long stare at the breakfast table. But when had plain gruel and weak black tea ever inspired enthusiasm? But then she had to hurry along to make it back to the Pig and Thistle on time.

  “Sparring today?” Tony asked.

  Wearing her boxing costume should have made the answer obvious to Tony. “I’m thinking it over.”

  “Whilst yer thinking it over, yer strange kinchins are foaming at the mouth back there,” Tony said. “Might as well get ’em all riled up.”

  “Violet back there?” Bess asked, watching Tony’s expression alter from contentment to concern.

  Tony had been the same fat and good-natured publican, veiled with irritation, ever since she was a dirty child with more time on the streets than in a home, school, or workhouse. He’d taught both her and John Arthur how to fight, a way to keep themselves fed and safe.

  Bess was doing her best to continue the tradition, teaching the neighborhood girls how to defend themselves. Most of them would end up as doxies when they budded, sometimes sold to brothels by fathers or brothers when the house got too crowded. Others still were matchgirls, orphans living on the streets, exposed to whatever came their way. Violet had already come in with a yellowing bruise across her cheek, the size of her father’s hand.

  “I know what you’re going to say about the child, so you don’t need to,” Bess said to Tony.

  The fat man chewed the end of a pipe. “That she reminds me o’ you at that age?”

  “I told you not to say it.”

  “That means you’re me,” Tony said.

  Bess shifted her gaze to look at the fat man. He’d kept them in clothes and food, letting them train there, sleep there, a rough sort of kindness. It wasn’t love, but it was something.

  “’Cept I’m better looking,” Bess joked as she broached the curtain that divided the pub and the training room.

  Six girls crowded in the makeshift ring, jumping in circles or playing with one another’s hair. The smallest girl, Lucy, tested the wobbling of Jane’s tooth. Violet stood in back, as if she could hide somehow. She’d missed last week and none of the other girls had been able to answer Bess’s questions about her.

  “Enough,” Bess yelled at them. When she taught, she dropped all of the fancy words she had learned from her clients. Any bit of the posh sort of accent dropped away, and she was back to the sounds of her birth, the Irish-inflected Cockney of Paddington, same as these girls.

  The students turned around to face her, their threadbare skirts causing a stir in Bess’s chest. She knew they were cold at night, each of them skinny and knob-kneed.

  “First thing, check yer toes,” Bess announced.

  The girls sat down on the cold floor, pulling off boots, all of them lined with newspaper for warmth and to better fit their small feet. Bess walked down the line, inspecting toes for injuries or frostbite. All of the girls had holes in their stockings, some patched, some not, each ragamuffin with dirt under both fingernails and toenails.

  Corinthian John Arthur sponsored each student who showed up to learn the sweet science, allowing Miz Penny to hand out steaming hot pasties at the end of class. Bess was certain that’s why she had good attendance.

  “Good, boots back on,” Bess said. “Keep yer toes warm—you need all of ’em when you box and when you run. Helps you move faster and keep yer balance.”

  Each one mumbled understanding as they raced to lace up their boots. One by one, they popped back up to their feet.

  “Did you bring your ropes?” Bess asked, hands on hips. “Need to build up your wind so you can run and swing your tiny fists as long as you need to. Pugilism takes stamina.”

  Half of them ran to the corner, uncoiling the frayed, muddy ropes from a pile. Three other girls stood looking at their feet.

  “Forgot yers?” Bess asked, looking at each of the big-eyed girls as they chewed their lips and avoided her gaze. “Or maybe someone took ’em from you?”

  When the only thing a person owned was the clothes on his back, taking a length of rope from a little girl seemed reasonable. Why should she get rope when he had nothing? Jumping rope was better than having them run the length of London, which was Tony’s way of training children. Bess ran every street for years, often being mistaken for a thief because of her speed. Not to say she weren’t a thief other times, but never when she was running for Tony. Could be why Tony didn’t want her running now that her woman’s body couldn’t be hidden by rough trousers anymore.

  “We’ll try to get you another. Mean times, you girls jump rope here, you others do your jumping over here without any rope.”

  Prinny was skipping rope as if she were in a park on a Sunday afternoon. Already a pretty thing, Prinny had natural honey-colored curls and big golden-brown eyes that point at the ends like a cat’s, giving off an air of precocious seduction. Funny she was called after the Prince Regent, maybe as an honor, or maybe as a cautionary tale. Bess knew the girl would soon be swept up by a bawd if she wasn’t careful. It made her want to shake the girl by the shoulders, wanting her to take her boxing lessons more seriously, to warn her of the harshness that still might lay ahead. But both of Prinny’s parents were still living, and she was the only one of the six girls who had such a luxury. Prinny was a silly child, her ideas of Paddington as a safe but dirty idyll in London nothing short of dangerous.

  But Violet was the kind of girl who scrutinized her surroundings, ever aware of a piece of bread, a bit of chalk, a length of string. What had moved, what had changed, where she could hide, is what Bess guessed. Violet was much like Bess herself had been—gangly, tall for her age, plain and whey-faced, unexpressive—the opposite of a charming girl like Prinny.

  The other two girls without ropes, Jane and Lucy, scampered off to their designated side to begin calisthenics. Violet stayed put. The three girls who had ropes began their skipping, and the rhythm of the rope skimming the floor provided a steady shush of noise. Prinny remained oblivious to the plight of the other girls, her pretty hair shining, all smiles despite the punishing regime Bess was trying to inflict. She paired the girls off to run drills. The two smallest, Lucy and Jane, matched well, as did the other two girls, Mary and Nell. Prinny and Violet didn’t match well with anyone, Violet because she was so tall and Prinny because she was the only one who was well-fed.

  “Prinny, keep skipping rope this round,” Bess instructed, sending the girl off to the far corner of the room. “Violet, come here.”

  The tall, sullen girl rambled over, favoring a leg, keeping the left side of her face turned away. Bess grabbed the girl’s chin, causing Violet to wince. Bess loosened her grip, still forcing the girl to expose her left side. Like the incident a few weeks ago, the yellowing of a bruise was extensive.

  At every lesson, Violet dropped her guard, stepping into a coiled fist time and again when the girls sparred. Bess screamed at her to put her guard up, hoping she could learn to block a punch with her hands, not her face. Hoping that someday it might translate.

  “Is this why you’ve been gone?” Bess demanded.

  Violet kept her expression neutral, her big cow eyes placid and distant.

  “There’s more, idn’t there?” Bess asked. “Where? Show me.”

  Violet shook her head once, subtle but defiant.

  Bess dropped her grip on the girl’s face and grabbed her hands, looking for scrapes and bruising that would show a fistfight. Instead, she found a gash across the girl’s left palm.

  “At least you got yer hands up,” Bess said, sighing.

  Bess pulled the sleeves back down to cover the marks. It explained the girl’s ability to take a facer. “I told you to come get me if you needed help.”

  Violet looked her square in the eye, no passion or venom left inside. The girl was being gutted fro
m the outside in. “I didn’t need help.”

  Bess ran her hands through her short-cropped hair. “Fine,” she said. “Is this yer da? Was he drinking?”

  Violet shrugged. “It don’t matter.”

  “I can make him stop,” Bess said.

  A spark flared in the girl. “No one can make him stop.”

  “All right,” Bess said. “But do you see he’s getting worse? Coming after you with a blade now?”

  Violet shook her head, as if to say that Bess couldn’t understand.

  “You don’t have to be on yer own. Come to my place. You can sleep in my flat on the nights he gets too much daffy.”

  Violet squinted her eyes. “That’s what he said you’d say.”

  Bess threw her hands up in the air. “That’s what any decent person would say.”

  “Wot a Tommy might say,” Violet hissed.

  “A man knifes his own daughter and I’m the pervert?” Bess challenged. A hot rage flashed through her and she had an urge to grab the girl. Take her chin where the bruising was worst and squeeze.

  “Because you wish you was a man,” Violet taunted. “Yer wearing trousers right now! Making us jump rope like boys.”

  Bess could hear Violet’s father in her words. She knew the man, Jeffers, a sometimes day laborer and petty thief who slept on the streets when he was blind with gin.

  Her boxing costume had been a topic of discussion by many a person in the neighborhood. Even though the wide legs looked like a skirt from a distance, eventually someone spotted the difference. And called her unnatural.

  “I’m a woman who understands how to protect herself from men like yer father. An’ I’m trying to teach you the same, Violet.” Bess breathed through her nose, trying to calm herself, just as she would during a match. Funny how it was when Violet called her a Tommy that it cut all the deeper. Despite her efforts, her voice continued to get louder. “Has yer father ever been backed into a corner by a gang who would do their worst, then press him into a dirty brothel with no way out? Because if you don’t learn this here, today, that’ll be yer fate.”