be if introduced unexpectedly to a man with six fingers. But his friend was savouring the discovery more darkly.
‘Fuck,’ he said again. ‘It’s a fucken Papist. A Papist on Pope Day. You gotta lotta front, you evil fucker . Standing here! With us ! You fucker!’ He was shaking his head with delight.
‘Oi! Lackwit!’ said Smith sharply. ‘Dim your gabber. I’m no more Popish ’n you.’
‘Jonesy!’ shouted the boy. ‘Simmo! Mr Higgins! Come over ’ere a minute! Look what we got here!’
Enough. Smith sidled into full shadow, and turned off briskly, yet at a walk, upon the usual city rule that a man who does not wish to be noticed, whether he has picked a pocket or pasted a play-bill where one is not allowed, should never pick himself out by running. Mistake. He had not made above twenty paces across the uneven grass, before the raised voices behind resolved into pounding feet, and a shoulder struck him behind the knees, and he was slammed to the turf beneath a mountain of rapidly augmenting male meat. Frieze against his cheek, his cheek against the cold dirt; the weight of at least two bodies on his back; excited, spiritous breathing. ‘Got him!’ someone cried. Smith was pinned. He tried to flex his spine, but there was no wriggling this time; the weight had him flat out. He waited, having no choice, bundled beneath so much brisket; yet calmer, to tell truth, than he had been a moment since. Smith, when his expedition was in nervous prospect – and when he was corked, contained, forced to bide his time aboard Henrietta – had imagined many dismal outcomes to his errand; disasters varied, disasters manifold; and tho’ none had quite figured him mobbed by angry prentices beside a bonfire, under mistake for a Jesuit, angry crowds had certainly been enumerated among disaster’s instruments, several ways; he had fingered over, in panicky imagination, those cards on which were printed futures where a multitude with screaming mouths dragged him gallows-ward, or pulped him to nothing in a ring of falling cudgels. Yet now, it seemed the maxim was true, that anticipation had been the worser part of the prospect, worsethan actuality. As the heap of prentice disassembled, and he was yanked up roughly to his feet with many hands on him, he felt panic drain out of him, leaving a different fluid behind, steady and chill: winter salamander-blood in his veins.
‘What have we here?’ said a new voice, big but lazy, blustering but comfortable: a kind of plebeian cousin to the Chief Justice’s, with the same confidence of being made room for. Here in the deep black space between the bonfire’s red domain and the first pale-lit windows of the town, it was not possible to make out much more of the lads that held him than a shifting dark mass of shoulders and heads, and the man they’d turned him to face, as he strolled up, taking his time, was lit only in patches and gleams, with the fire-light behind the fat dome of his head, and distant scarlet picking out the delicate frizzle of his side-whiskers. But it was dimly clear he was wearing stripes for the holiday, broad avenues of lighter and darker silk stretched over his bulk, for if the boys were bullcalfs, he was the full ox. And he smelled of – the new, cooler Smith registered it as one more fact of the situation, plain as an angle in Euclid – animal blood. Steak, black pudding, offal in the mincer. Mr Higgins, I presume. The butcher come sauntering to see what the butcher’s boys had caught. But not to offer adult reproof, oh no; the butcher too was on holiday. And the rest of the dispersing crowd was spreading off in the darkness to its private pursuits; no help coming, there. The prentices had Smith held spread-eagled by his arms. The butcher drew back a fist as big as a pie, taking his time, taking his time. ‘O-o-o-o-o,’ went the prentices, on a rising note of pleasure—
But Mr Smith had learned a thing or two besides the art of patient starvation
‘Fuck,’ he said again. ‘It’s a fucken Papist. A Papist on Pope Day. You gotta lotta front, you evil fucker . Standing here! With us ! You fucker!’ He was shaking his head with delight.
‘Oi! Lackwit!’ said Smith sharply. ‘Dim your gabber. I’m no more Popish ’n you.’
‘Jonesy!’ shouted the boy. ‘Simmo! Mr Higgins! Come over ’ere a minute! Look what we got here!’
Enough. Smith sidled into full shadow, and turned off briskly, yet at a walk, upon the usual city rule that a man who does not wish to be noticed, whether he has picked a pocket or pasted a play-bill where one is not allowed, should never pick himself out by running. Mistake. He had not made above twenty paces across the uneven grass, before the raised voices behind resolved into pounding feet, and a shoulder struck him behind the knees, and he was slammed to the turf beneath a mountain of rapidly augmenting male meat. Frieze against his cheek, his cheek against the cold dirt; the weight of at least two bodies on his back; excited, spiritous breathing. ‘Got him!’ someone cried. Smith was pinned. He tried to flex his spine, but there was no wriggling this time; the weight had him flat out. He waited, having no choice, bundled beneath so much brisket; yet calmer, to tell truth, than he had been a moment since. Smith, when his expedition was in nervous prospect – and when he was corked, contained, forced to bide his time aboard Henrietta – had imagined many dismal outcomes to his errand; disasters varied, disasters manifold; and tho’ none had quite figured him mobbed by angry prentices beside a bonfire, under mistake for a Jesuit, angry crowds had certainly been enumerated among disaster’s instruments, several ways; he had fingered over, in panicky imagination, those cards on which were printed futures where a multitude with screaming mouths dragged him gallows-ward, or pulped him to nothing in a ring of falling cudgels. Yet now, it seemed the maxim was true, that anticipation had been the worser part of the prospect, worsethan actuality. As the heap of prentice disassembled, and he was yanked up roughly to his feet with many hands on him, he felt panic drain out of him, leaving a different fluid behind, steady and chill: winter salamander-blood in his veins.
‘What have we here?’ said a new voice, big but lazy, blustering but comfortable: a kind of plebeian cousin to the Chief Justice’s, with the same confidence of being made room for. Here in the deep black space between the bonfire’s red domain and the first pale-lit windows of the town, it was not possible to make out much more of the lads that held him than a shifting dark mass of shoulders and heads, and the man they’d turned him to face, as he strolled up, taking his time, was lit only in patches and gleams, with the fire-light behind the fat dome of his head, and distant scarlet picking out the delicate frizzle of his side-whiskers. But it was dimly clear he was wearing stripes for the holiday, broad avenues of lighter and darker silk stretched over his bulk, for if the boys were bullcalfs, he was the full ox. And he smelled of – the new, cooler Smith registered it as one more fact of the situation, plain as an angle in Euclid – animal blood. Steak, black pudding, offal in the mincer. Mr Higgins, I presume. The butcher come sauntering to see what the butcher’s boys had caught. But not to offer adult reproof, oh no; the butcher too was on holiday. And the rest of the dispersing crowd was spreading off in the darkness to its private pursuits; no help coming, there. The prentices had Smith held spread-eagled by his arms. The butcher drew back a fist as big as a pie, taking his time, taking his time. ‘O-o-o-o-o,’ went the prentices, on a rising note of pleasure—
But Mr Smith had learned a thing or two besides the art of patient starvation
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