The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,63

said. “You can never tell what kind of a hold to take, you have to live day by day.”

“An’ there is somethin’ else in it. It is a difficult matter to get across, but when I saw him go under with them fellers rainin’ blows on him, what struck me as the most calamitous was that he could not make a sound above a whisper—he was beaten out of his senses with no voice to him. That man will niver get his bones together again after the beatin’ they gave him.”

“I have known it before,” Armstrong said. “It is the apothecaries of the town that sets them on, because they lose their trade. So you didn’t do well with the fiddlin’?”

“I started off well enough, but it all came to nothin’. It was me own money that I put down, so I am worse off than I was before.”

“Well, I had a good day myself. I was thrown once but I still won best of three. Four bouts an’ I won them all. I have money enough to stay in this inn tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be makin’ toward Chester. That is westward, a different road from what you are takin’. I am glad we have met again, because there was somethin’ I had in mind to say to you. I been travelin’ these roads now for close on twenty years. I meet people by the way, an’ sometimes we go along together for a while, an’ we talk, as people will. There is various reasons for bein’ on the road. There is those lookin’ for somethin’, mebbe some work or somethin’ that will change their luck. There is those that are runnin’ away from someone or somethin’. There is those that can never stay long in any place an’ have always to be movin’ on. But in all these years I never met anyone who is not on the road for his own sake but because of a vow of friendship that he has made. It struck me, I don’t mind tellin’ you. I would like to help you on your way. I have had luck today, an’ mebbe it was brought by you. I want to give you the two shillin’ that was my stake when I started off this mornin’.”

The wrestler dug in his pocket, took out a handful of coins, and pushed some of them across the table to Sullivan. “This will help you get to Durham an’ keep your promise,” he said.

Sullivan looked at the money before him, and he felt tears gathering in his eyes. “You have restored me faith in human nature,” he said. “I was robbed twice before, but if one man in three has a generous heart, it will mount up to something in the years to come.”

“I am forty-three years old, near as I can work it out,” the wrestler said. “The lads I am wrestlin’ with are half my age mostly. I won today, but the time is comin’ when I won’t. You are goin’ on a mission of friendship. What happens to you afterward don’t matter so much, once you have carried it out. I am not goin’ anywhere except to a bad fall and the workhouse.”

Looking through the mist of his tears, it seemed to Sullivan that he was seeing the wrestler’s face for the first time. One cheek was bruised from the fall he had taken. The eyes were short-lashed and blue and as guileless as a child’s.

“I thought you were plannin’ to rob me of sixpence,” Sullivan said, “an’ you are givin’ me four times as much.” He reached out to take the other’s hand. “I will remember this kindness till the end of me days,” he said.

16

The flammable gas known to the miners as firedamp was colorless and odorless and it could gather anywhere below the ground, in newly opened workings or in old hollows where work had been abandoned. As the shafts got deeper and the leakage of water more controlled, the currents of air that the water had caused were much reduced, and the gas at the deeper levels became more frequent. It could lurk undetected for long periods and could be exploded without warning by the flame of a candle, carrying death and destruction throughout the mine.

Four hours into his work at the coal face, his stint of coal only half hewed out, James Bordon saw a pale, bluish cap appear at the tip of his candle, a kind of ghost flame