against a man who called himself Friedrich and spoke with a heavy Continental accent. For this match, they were to use sabers, according to some method or whim of Clancy’s. The most Percy could say about the saber was that he enjoyed the sound the curved blade made when it sliced through the air. In every other capacity it was inferior to the smallsword and even the clumsy rapier.
The crowd oohed and aahed when Percy’s opponent demonstrated the sharpness of his blade by slicing through a piece of canvas. Percy rolled his eyes.
While they fought, Friedrich muttered under his breath in what Percy assumed was German. He was very good, possibly as good as Percy, but Percy could tell he was used to fighting with a lighter weapon, because he quickly began to pant.
To give the man time to catch his breath, and to give the audience their money’s worth, Percy began leading his opponent around the scaffold, dancing backward and not attempting any kind of offense. Percy ducked under the other man’s arm, tumbled out of reach, and spun with a flourish of his sword.
Eventually, when he was beginning to worry about exhausting himself, he disarmed the man. Instead of simply taking hold of the hilt, he tossed it high in the air. As he watched the weapon turn over, he hoped that from the audience’s perspective it looked like the weapon had been thrown when Friedrich let go.
Percy caught the saber by its hilt, held both weapons out to the side, and bowed first to Friedrich, and then to the audience.
Friedrich said something that Percy strongly suspected was German profanity when Percy handed him back his sword.
“No blood,” Percy said to Clancy, who was not paying him any attention, because he was busy collecting coins while his assistant took bets.
Next were backswords, then an appallingly clunky broadsword, which Percy had to borrow from another fighter, as he did not possess one of his own. Then came a rather amusing fight against Brannigan with a smallsword in one hand and a dagger in the other. The last fight was once again smallswords, and Percy made sure it lasted a full half hour before he threw the sword in the air and caught it with a flourish.
When Percy was presented with the purse at the end of the afternoon, he figured he needed to buy some goodwill with these fellows if he wanted to fight them again. “I see a tavern on the corner,” he said as loudly as he could. “I’ll stand you all a pint and a supper as thanks for the most entertainment I’ve had in months.”
His first thought had been to figure out some way to fairly split the purse among the lot of them, but he thought that would come across as too high-handed, and—for reasons he could not quite articulate—he wanted these men to like him. It had, after all, been a long time since he had enjoyed anything that could be called an evening out with friends. All the swordsmen except the German, and including Clancy, who Percy definitely had not invited, joined him at the tavern.
Percy spent half his winnings on ale and beefsteak that night. The rest would go to Collins. In the future, he’d need to save that money. The idea of saving money that he had earned, even such a small sum as this, felt better than clandestinely selling jewels and snuffboxes.
He felt like he had accomplished something. And he realized that this might have been the first time he had ever felt anything of the sort.
Chapter 31
“You need to come now,” Betty said, barging into the shop on her day off.
“You may have noticed that I keep a coffeehouse,” Kit said. “I can’t just—”
“I’ll take over. Do you know the scaffold where they sometimes have prizefights? You need to go there. Now.”
“I don’t suppose there’d be any use to asking you why,” he sighed, already grabbing his walking stick and stepping out from behind the counter.
“Go,” she said, all but shoving him out the door.
Kit’s leg was in an especially recalcitrant mood, so he was in a sorry state by the time he reached the corner of Covent Garden that Betty had specified. The square was crowded, people standing shoulder to shoulder in front of a timber stage. At first Kit thought he was watching a play or some kind of exhibition, and it took a long moment of confusion to understand that the people who were dancing